JCB last week celebrated the production of its 100,000th compact excavator. The company’s first excavator – an 801 model weighing 3,307 pounds – was produced in 1989. By 1992, JCB’s compact excavator range expanded to four models with 1,000 units produced annually.
JCB’s 100,000th unit was a 24,250-pound 100C-1, one of 22 models in the company’s compact excavator range. The compact excavator sector is one of the most competitive areas of the global construction equipment market, worth an estimated $5.85 billion annually, JCB said, with more than 20 major manufacturers and almost 200,000 sold worldwide annually.
“JCB has an innovative, powerful and robust range of compact excavators which keep growing in popularity,” said JCB CEO Graeme Macdonald. “From being a challenger in the market 25 years ago, JCB is now firmly established as an industry leader, setting trends for design innovation and manufacturing excellence. To have produced 100,000 compact excavators is something for the whole JCB team to celebrate, and with more additions to the range due later this year, we look forward to more growth in this important sector of the market.”
JCB has recently capitalized on the growing opportunity presented by the compact excavator sector by investing $22 million in manufacturing technology and new product development. Over the past two years, JCB has launched new models such as the 67C-1, 85Z-1, 86C-1 and 100C-1 models, competing in the 13,000- to 22,000-pound categories.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.