Hill Engineering Company Profile
Hill Engineering Ltd was established in 1994 by Ian Hill to manufacture industrial products however in 1996 the company focused on the production of Hydraulic Quick Hitches for the excavator market with a second factory opening in 2004 dedicated to the manufacture of excavator buckets for Hitachi. Following a £4.5 million investment in 2006 both factories amalgamated into an 85000 sq ft purpose built factory in Newry, Co.Down, N.Ireland.
With the new facility concentrating on producing product to meet customer demand, the original manufacturing location has become a dedicated research and development facility. A team of highly skilled engineers devote their efforts to creating more advanced attachments for the excavator world and examining ways to enhance production processes. Part of the product development requires bespoke test rigs to be designed and manufactured to allow all new products to go through rigorous testing prior to production. The test rigs are designed to expose the components to the equivalent of a life time of use in a matter of weeks. When the hitch is set up in the rig it will run 24 hrs a day 7 days a week until satisfactory tests have been completed. It is estimated that an excavator on full production will go through 1150 cycles per day therefore every 1 million cycles on the test rig equates to 4 years actual use.
Hill Engineering is now recognised as a leading manufacturer of quick hitches and buckets in the UK and Ireland. All Hill products are ISO 9001 and CE accredited and comply with the European Directives EN 474. The Health & Safety Exectutive in the UK (HSE) recently decided that semi-automatic hitches should no longer be supplied into the UK market. On the 1st October 2008 the HSE introduced a safeguard action against the European Standard EN 474 and proposed that a change should be made to EN 474, and a new ISO standard for quick hitches created.
Hill Engineering Quick Hitch products fully satisfy the current HSE requirements and Hill are involved in the Plant Safety working group which has been formed, to take forward safety initiatives related to the use of plant in the construction industry in the UK.
Hill Engineering is a customer focused organisation with a flexible approach to tailor equipment to meet individual customer requirements. The company currently manufactures variable centre Quick Hitches ranging from 5Ton to 100 Ton excavators e.g. PC50 – PC1250. The latest fully automatic hitches allow the operator to change buckets without leaving the machine cab, automatically locking the attachment in place once the pins have been located. The unique design also enables the machine operator to visually confirm from within the cab that the bucket or other attachment is securely locked in position Ten years ago around 10% of the excavators in use in the UK were fitted with some form of quick hitch, this figure is now closer to 80%. One hitch can pickup several OEM buckets e.g. the CAT 312 hitch will pick up, Hitachi, John Deere, Case, Link Belt, Kobelco and Daewoo Buckets which greatly increases the machine's versatility and does not tie the excavator user to one particular machine brand. An operator can rapidly change between buckets and attachments for specific tasks which cuts machine downtime.
The Company also manufacture heavy duty Excavator Buckets from 13Ton to 50Ton machine weight eg ZX130 – ZX 870, Severe Duty Rock buckets, front loading shovels and can design and manufacture attachments to customer specific requirements.
Example of the current customer base.The main Customers can be broken into three groups:
- Excavator OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer). eg Hitachi UK.
- Machinery distributors eg Woods Equipment Company USA.
- Large plant hire companies eg One Call Plant Hire. UK.