The plant you are currently using almost certainly does not meet the new European Exhaust Emission Regulation Stage III B that started to come into force at the start of this year.
The new regulations pose a challenge for construction machinery manufacturers that will require a great deal of investment and development. For you, their customers, that means higher prices. There might just be a trade-off in terms of fuel saving, but it is by no means guaranteed.
You know things must be bad when even the Germans are complaining. And they are. The German Engineering Federation, VDMA, sees the tighter regulation as “counter-productive”.
At the Wirtgen-Group, the world’s largest manufacturer of road construction machinery, they say it is now taking twice as long to make each machine. Dr Günter Hähn, the Executive Director in charge of Wirtgen GmbH’s Technical Division, says: “We have to adapt our machines. That costs a lot of money.”
He estimates that up to half of all development capacities within the group have been taken up by the emissions theme for many months and this will continue to be the case for an indefinite period. “The expenditure and costs are enormous.”
The situation is the same for all manufacturers of construction and building material machinery, not only in Germany but throughout Europe and the USA.
Since the start of this year, new mobile machines in the over 130kW and less than 560kW categories sold in the USA or Europe must conform to exhaust emission regulation Stage III B and US norm tier 4 Interim. From the start of next year the same requirements will also apply to 57-130kW machines and one year later even smaller machines, in the 37-56kW range, will be affected. Exemption clauses have little or no effect on this.
And it is not finished yet. In 2014, Stage IV will start to be applied, with even stricter emission controls, although Benedict Dunkelberg, Managing Director of Ahlmann Baumaschinen GmbH, part of the Mecalac Group, says the changes that will be necessary for this will not be as significant or expensive as those for Stage III B.
But even as the manufacturers have their hands full with refitting and upgrading their machines to Stage III B, in Brussels discussions about a Stage V are already underway.
Whether it will come and when, and how long that will mean Stage IV remains in force, nobody knows.
According to Frank Diedrich, who represents the VDMA interests in Brussels, European machine manufacturers are opposing the introduction of further exhaust emission regulations.
VDMA Executive Director Joachim Schmid: “The industry regards a further tightening of legislation as counter-productive, both in terms of environmental policy and economic aspects.”
In the meantime, they have to comply with the legislation and you have to pay the price of another increase in costs putting a further squeeze on your margins.