Kobelco

Kobelco Construction Machinery is a division of Kobe Steel, Ltd., a Japanese diversified corporation, which includes metallurgical, machine-building, and real estate companies. The headquarters of the company is located in Tokyo.

The main specialization of Kobelco Construction Machinery is the development and production of machines and mechanisms for the construction, mining and road-building industries: hydraulic crawler excavators (weighing from 0.95 to 48 tons), mini-excavators (from 0, 95 to 8.0 tons) , hydraulic pneumatic wheel cranes (lifting capacity up to 51 tons), as well as crawler cranes with lattice booms (loading capacity up to 800 tons)

The history of the company begins with the trading company “Kobe Seikosho”, founded in 1905 in the city of Kobe. Six years later, in 1911, Kobe Seikosho was registered as a company, Kobe Steel, Ltd, which later became a major steel giant.

The company launched its first excavator, which simultaneously became the first special machine produced in Japan, in 1930. They became an excavator for the mining industry - model 50K with electric drive. A few years later, the company released the first dragline, the 30K model, also electrically operated. After the end of the Second World War, the company became increasingly involved in the development of construction and special equipment. In the 1940s, it began the serial production of steam and power driven excavators, and in the 1950s it mastered the production of the first automobile cranes (10KT and 20KT) and pile hammers.

In 1955, the company entered into an agreement with Harnischfeger. According to this agreement, Kobelco received the production technology of cranes. In 1956, the company started production of floating cranes (model 355KD) and excavators (model 255A). And two years later, in 1957, the division of the company that produced special equipment is allocated to an independent branch, “Shinko Koji K.K.”. At the same time, the production facilities of the branch are developing the production of tracked and truck cranes (models 255A-LC and 255TC).

In the 1960s, the direction of cranes began to actively develop. So, in 1962, in the city of Akashi, the Okubo plant opened a center for scientific research, an institute of construction equipment. In the same year, the company entered into an agreement with the French engineering company Poclain, which was the first in hydraulic excavators. In the following 1970s, the company began producing bucket loaders (LK series). At the same time, two subsidiaries were established - Kai (Houston, USA) and Kisco (Singapore).

In the 1980s, the company (together with the American P & H [) put a large batch of mining excavators in the USSR. By the end of the 80s, the company's construction machinery division was transformed into an independent company, Shinko Kobelco Construction Machinery, Ltd.