By Yevgeny Zhdanovich
It is produced at Dnepr Mechanical Plant and is named after it. Two years ago, the factory began to assemble excavators from Chinese vehicle sets using German, Korean and Italian components, notes Igor Nikitin, its director. “Belarusian parts were accounting for just 10 percent of produced vehicles, which isn’t correct, so we decided to improve the situation. Now our excavator can truly be called ‘Belarusian’, with imported components accounting for less than 35 percent: chain tracks, the powerful engine and some other parts not manufactured in our country.”
A famous German firm has been to assess the performance of the excavator and is suitably impressed, believing it can worthily rival anything similar worldwide.
By the end of this year, the plant will have produced six more vehicles — in great demand in the spheres of construction and melioration. Next year, Dnepr JSC plans to manufacture at least 50 of the excavators and its designers are already working on a new 19 tonne wheeled model (rather than using chain tracks), with one cubic metre bucket capacity.
“Our specialists have already begun developing the main components for the next ‘creation’,” stresses Mr. Nikitin.
