The owners of a sand quarry in Kstovo have enlisted an array of Volvo Construction Equipment to excavate materials at the Russian site.
Klyuchischi’s fleet includes a number of excavators ranging from 25 tonnes to 31 tonnes including two EC290B-Prime crawlers, an EC240, an EC250, and an EC300 B-Prime unit.
A Volvo L180F-Series wheel loader is also being used to shift sand and gravel at the quarry.
“Since we founded the company in 2007, we have worked with Volvo,” said Oleg Venalevich Kolotygin, chief engineer at Klyuchischi.
“We started with one Volvo machine – an EW160C-Series wheeled excavator – and used it non-stop for five years before we sold it, but it was still in perfect working order.
“During this time, the machine performed an incredible amount of work and proved how cost-effective and productive it was. It dug deep pits with ease, and got to those hard-to-reach places you cannot reach using a tracked excavator,” he explained.
Klyuchischi’s Kstovo quarry is located on the right bank of the Volga River, 22km southeast of Nizhny Novgorod. Just like the Middle East, temperatures can reach 40oC in summer, but unlike the local region, they can plunge as low as -35oC during winter months.
Despite these extreme working conditions, the Volvo CE fleet’s owners contend that the machines have been able to handle all that has been thrown at them, and with impressive levels of performance.
“We chose Volvo excavators because they offer high performance and speed,” explained Kolotygin.
“At the same time, they have very efficient engines, which significantly reduce production costs. The most important feature for us is that the machines can be adapted to our climate and operating conditions.
“When we get a licence to conduct quarrying blasting, we will need larger excavators with rock buckets and more powerful trucks. Most likely, we will use Volvos because, talking from experience, they are the best,” he concluded.
