DA Johnstone Plant Hire has put the first Hyundai HD130A dozer in the UK to work on a wind farm project in Scotland.
The machine joins a range of Hyundai crawler excavators on the Garbet Wind Farm construction site, south east of Dufftown in Moray.
Working for contractor AE Yates Civil Engineering, the project will construct seven 200m-high Nordex wind turbines for Energiekontor UK, producing an installed capacity of up to 46.2MW of energy.
Work on the the project, which sits on a remote hillside site, commenced in September and is expected to be completed by late 2026. The contractor has already built several miles of compacted aggregate access road to reach the moorland site, creating a compound for workers and equipment, and constructing a base for an on-site concrete batching plant.
DA Johnstone, based in Morpeth, Northumberland, is no stranger to remote locations. The business was formed in 1997 by owner David Johnstone, who bought his first backhoe loader at the age of 21. Originally from Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, Johnstone had been driving machines with his father since childhood.
Today, DA Johnstone Plant Hire now boasts more than 150 pieces of plant, including 14 Hyundai excavators, from the 13-tonne HX130A through to a 48-tonne HX480A.
Mr Johnstone said, “They are a fantastic digger. We have a lot of remote work, where reliability and back-up are essential. The Hyundai machines are really reliable and the supportfrom our dealer is first-class.”
DA Johnstone has a field service engineer based on the Garbet project site full time. The Hyundais have all been supplied by dealer Taylor & Braithwaite.
“We use the Hi-Mate telematic system and Taylor & Braithwaite will call us to flag up a fault code or to problem solve, before it even becomes a problem,” said Johnstone’s Plant manager Jake Cunningham.
Sean Bargh, AE Yates’ project manager on site added, “I can’t speak highly enough of the Hyundais and of Taylor & Braithwaite.”
With other brands of dozer on the fleet already, Johnstone’s decision to go with the new HD130A followed a year-long cross-hire of a similar model, that proved its reliability. Launched at the Bauma exhibition in April, the HD130A is Hyundai’s first dozer in Europe, although the technology has been proven in other markets.
Weighing just over 15-tonnes, the HD130A is powered by a 117kW (157hp) Stage V diesel engine. This drives through a two-speed hydrostatic transmission, delivering up to 22,000kgf of drawbar pull. DA Johnstone has specified the machine in LGP configuration, with wider tracks and a 4.18m3 six-way angle-tilt blade. The dozer is also equipped with a three-tooth ripper at the rear.
Working with a fleet of ADTs and a soil compaction roller, the dozer will initially be used to create the access road that links the seven wind turbines and the new sub-station that will be built on site. Hyundai crawler excavators remove the top layer of peat and earth, before digging out the sandy lower layers of material, that are being compacted to create the road and turbine location bases. This is then topped with aggregate to provide a solid roadway for the delivery of turbine components.
Each of the wind farm’s turbines will arrive on site on up to 12 road haulage trucks, before being assembled in-situ. AE Yates is preparing the seven installation sites, with each base taking up to 70 tonnes of reinforcing steel, set in around 600m3 of concrete. The installations are surrounded by land drainage and there are ducts within the structure to accommodate the cables that will transmit electricity.
