The teamwork of two generations of designers and many years of great references mean victory even on the international field

Uničov, 15 February 2006

The metallurgical and engineering complex of UNEX a.s. together with its Austrian partner, Voest Alpine Materials Handling, and Indian partner, Larsen & Toubro Limited, won the tender for the supply of new bucket-wheel excavators for the Indian market. Just last year this same consortium of companies was successful in a tender concerning two excavators meant for mining coal in the mine of the Indian corporation of Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited. The deciding factor that led to success was the design of the machines, which came from the Unex Development Department.

The secret of success lies in professionalism and tradition

The history of the Research and Development Department goes back to the 1950s. Back then, the new state-owned company Uničovské strojírny (Uničov Engineering) built upon the production program of Škoda Plzeň and its Design Engineering Department, which also encompassed development. That is why it put together a team of experienced designers from the town of Plzeň. Unex’s first products were rope bucket excavators with electric and diesel drives, bucket-wheel excavators, loaders, and many types of cranes. From that time on, tens of subsequent designs and machines came out of Unex: bucket-wheel and shovel excavators, cranes, yard machines, and conveyor belts.

The main advantage of the large-scale excavators designed and manufactured at UNEX is their capacity and reliability under extreme mining-geological conditions, e.g. in the north Bohemian brown coal basin.

“Thanks to the development and renewal of mining technology in the past few years, our team of designers and design engineers has been able to create modern designs that retain all that is good on existing large-scale excavators and simultaneously meet the new requirements of mining companies,” said Vít KOSTEČKA, Head of Development. “The advantages of the machines are that they are lighter, have a higher capacity, are more modern, and at the same time they retain the advantages of their tried and tested for many years predecessors. Currently, we are working on various designs of modernized versions of the K2000, KU800 and KU300 large-scale excavators, which, for almost half a century, have been mining most of the coal and a substantial portion of the overburden, and not only in Czech brown coal basins. The modernization of large-scale excavators should be the foundation for the future development of mining activities in the north Bohemian brown coal basin.”

“In the past 2 years we gradually made our team younger and increased it by 30 new designers and design engineers with the objective of combining the unique expertise and many years of experience of the older generation with the vitality and modern technology of the younger generation. The average age of the employees in the Development Office is 36, which guarantees the continuity of strategic equipment development for Czech power engineering,” added the Managing Director of Unex.