The new 'Digger Guard' range from Norplast Ltd. was developed in response to a brief from Hitachi, which asked the company to design a new vandal guard to overcome problems with existing systems used to protect excavator cabs.
Rising to the challenge, the Newcastle company's design and development team achieved improvements that resulted in a patent. With Hitachi as its first major customer, Norplast is overseeing the roll out of Digger Guard products on excavators across the UK.
“The existing products on the market had a number of problems that Hitachi Construction Machinery wanted to improve upon: they were difficult to install and remove, heavy and prone to wear, noisy and not watertight when stored,” said Norplast Managing Director, Dave Smith.
“Construction industry machinery is exposed to extensive risk of costly damage both accidentally and through vandalism. With Digger Guard we have achieved improvements that we’re confident will save operators time on the job, and reduce both down-time and insurance costs.”
In developing its Digger Guard range for Hitachi excavators, Norplast optimised its design and material specifications to reflect both companies’ environmental and sustainability priorities across production, performance, and end of life processing. Digger Guard products are REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) compliant and made using recyclable polymer materials.
Norplast itself has extensive experience across the transport, heavy machinery and food manufacturing industries. Its product development team work with customers on industry, application and product specific projects to advance solutions and improvements.
