Austin Engineering has placed second overall and was also awarded the Peoples’ Choice Award at the prestigious 2019 Swedish Steel Awards for its unique two-piece excavator bucket.

Austin’s excavator shines at Swedish awards

The Swedish Steel Prize is an international award for companies, institutions and individuals in the steel industry. For 20 years, it has been recognising and rewarding those that have developed a method or product that fully utilises the potential of high-strength, wear resistant and other premium steels.

An independent professional jury assessed the entries by considering their applicability, profitability, environmental benefits, performance, innovation and creativity.

According to the jury, Austin Engineering took a significant leap in innovation for the design and maintenance of excavator buckets.

“With a modular approach, they have developed an innovative concept that combines low weight with optimal use of the complete product before scrapping. The solution utilises the characteristics of high strength and wear resistant steel and has extremely low barriers for implementation.”

Designed and manufactured in Australia by Austin Engineering, the two-piece bucket features a reusable upper section and a consumable lower segment designed for quick and safe bucket change-outs during scheduled maintenance intervals.

The reusable upper section has been designed to maintain overall structural integrity of the assembly for a predetermined service life through multiple change-outs of the lower, consumable, section.

According to the company, typical baseline service life for the upper section service will be in the vicinity of 30,000 hours; approximately four to five years based on industry expectations of conventional one-piece buckets of similar size and capacities.