SSAB (www.ssab.com) — a Nordic and US-based steel company with production facilities in Sweden, Finland and the USA — has been supplying the family business Kocurek Excavators (based in Ipswich, England) with its Strenx performance steel for 35 years.

Kocurek (www.kocurek.com) needs the capabilities offered by this material to withstand the extreme forces encountered when tearing down buildings with demolition equipment.

Another benefit of this material is that it is easy to work with, as David Kocurek highlights: “The key benefit for our company is that we can achieve the high technical results required from the product while welding under normal conditions.

"I think that is the most important thing for me.

"Another benefit is that SSAB’s plate products are delivered blasted and primed, without any scale or rust on them. With the primer used, we have been able to weld straight onto the plates without any prior cleaning, and this has saved us a lot of time over the years.”

The arms of demolition excavators can be up to 70m long, and they need to be able to withstand extreme forces when tearing buildings down, piece by piece. The use of Strenx performance steel gives the strength needed while saving weight. “We are always pushing the limits of what we are achieving with the excavators.

We need to make the arms as long as possible, as our customers constantly want to go higher. We try to save weight by using a thinner material, and naturally we need to maintain strength.

"We use SSAB’s Strenx 700 steel to maintain the strength while reducing the thickness of the plate used.”

Kocurek’s products are in high demand all over the world, and the company exports equipment throughout Europe, the USA, the Philippines and India. Recently, there have been a lot of orders coming from Australia.

For the manufacturing process, long steel plates are required for the high-reach equipment. SSAB has been able to supply Kocurek with larger plate sizes, so the product can be put together with fewer joins.

“When you are building something very long, the fewer joins the better. One of the key points where SSAB has helped us is with sheets that we can use effectively and efficiently for our designs.”