Kilic notches up first international sale, to Vietnam
Australian Bulk Handling Review
Adelaide-based firm Kilic Engineering, best known for its supply of materials handling systems to Australia’s grain sector, has recently had its first international sale – to Vietnam.
Kilic supplied a drive-over-hopper to Vietnam in January 2018. The machine is operating at a river port and is loading barges with soybean meal, wheat and corn at the facility just south of Ho Chi Min City.
Previously, Kilic’s drive-over-hoppers have mainly gone to customers in Australia’s grain sector.
“It’s further proof that it’s not isolated to just grain sites or bunker sites,” explained Jason Kilic, managing director of Kilic Engineering. “The drive-oiver-hoppers can be used at ports and harbours.”
Back in Australia, Kilic has achieved much success with its BunkerStacker3000 drive-over-hopper and stacker, which is designed to simplify the unloading of grain from truck trailers into bunkers.
In conversation with ABHR, Jason explained the advantages of the system, designed by Kilic Engineering.
They are self-propelled, so the whole machine moves along the bunker,” he said. “They are designed for the driver to dump and go. The tonnage rate is way out there; it’s designed for 600 tonnes per hour which equates to, with all your truck movements, about 450 tonnes per hour. That equates to unloading three B-doubles in 16 minutes.
“It’s easy to move. It doesn’t take long to engage the wheels to, in effect, lift the machine and drive off. With other machines, you have to disengage everything and fir a tower, grab a front-end loader and drag the thing around the site. This thing is single person operation.”
The origins of the design of the original BunkerStacker3000 go back to the year 1999, when Kilic built the machines predominantly for the old South Australian CBH, now Viterra. However, in 2013 the company engaged in a major re-fresh of the design.
“We decided to go back to the drawing board with a clean canvas,” said Jason. “That was after listening to a lot of operators and truck drivers. We spoke to people on the ground about what they liked and didn’t like and would like to see. We challenged everything, we picked the best bits and put together a design that tried to tick all the boxes.”
Australian Bulk Handling Review, April 2018
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