About Us
For the last 25 years Kocurek has sought to provide solutions to customer's requirements by increasing the versatility of their standard Hydraulic Excavators.
Kocurek Excavators is a family owned private company founded in 1979 by Mrs Rita Kocurek and her son David. The company’s roots have always been in Engineering and Plant Hire. The first premises were established at The Barn, Poplar Lane, a former farm on the outskirts of Ipswich.
The company’s first foray into specialist equipment was built as a result of an urgent request from a regular customer of Kocurek Excavators, the Water Board. They needed a small compact machine with plenty of reach thus the first long reach excavator based on a Hinimoto 3.5 ton base machine was born. From these initial beginnings the work of manufacturing such equipments has continued to grow. We have never forgotten who gave us our first break and we have continued to this very day to regularly supply our first customer (now renamed The Environment Agency) with specialist equipment.
By 1993 after 15 years at Poplar Lane, the premises were filled to bursting point and with the encouragement of the local council steps were taken to locate a new site. The company was fortunate to locate a site on the Hadleigh Road Industrial Estate only 2 miles from Poplar Lane on land previously owned by British Telecom. Work commenced in 1994 to create a purpose built facility for the production of excavator front end equipments.
The site extends to 1.3 hectares and buildings now occupy 4200 square metres. The remaining uncovered area is block paved to serve as storage and assembly area, which is serviced with a full span 30 ton rail mounted “Goliath” crane.
Once again we have filled our factory to bursting point at Hadleigh Road and 2007 saw us purchase an old factory from one of our suppliers some 11 miles/18 kilometres away in Bucklesham. This site extends to 1.2 hectares and has been extensively modernised with new buildings, fully paved outside area for storage and assembly and introduction of new craneage (inside and out) and the addition of a new state of the art Plasma and Gas Cutter which is also the largest in the area.
This further major capital expenditure when combined with our personal experience gleaned in our earlier days as a Plant Hire operation has given us an unparalleled background for our manufacturing base. The end result is a company uniquely able to respond to field problems, be they design, manufacture or production that our customers may encounter.
From day one our forte has been to offer a solution to customers’ problems that are that little bit different or difficult. We thrive on the satisfaction of taking the customer needs on board and coming up with a solution.
Kocurek Excavators operates as an ethical company for the benefit of our customers, employees and owners. To this end the company is operated on democratic principles and has resisted the trend towards subcontracting parts of our manufacturing on the basis of cost. The company employs a policy of manufacturing all parts in house, which creates work for our employees and allows us to fully control the quality of product delivered to our customers. In addition modifications and changes to our designs can be transferred to the shop floor very quickly and placed into production.
The factory layout and equipment has been designed to give a natural flow of work thereby ensuring we achieve maximum manufacturing capacity. From the outset it was decided that there would be no compromise since the long term aim was to create the best possible facility dedicated to the design and manufacture of excavator front end equipment.
There will be a continued investment both in buildings and equipment at both our sites to make Kocurek Equipments one of the best of its type in Europe. One of the key elements in successfully developing this facility has been the gathering together of a skilled and fully committed work force. We are justifiably very proud of our workforce, which is reflected in the very small turnover of staff that we get.
Changing work practices have meant a continual development of our equipment from the humble long reach excavator first conceived at the old works in the late 70s to some of today's innovative offerings which enable the customer to reach up or down to what were previously unimaginable heights or depths.
Today's offerings results in a truly multi purpose machine able to undertake many tasks quickly and efficiently.
The achievement of this development has come about for two reasons both related to people. Firstly our customers who over the years have brought us their ideas and their problems and been prepared to enter into contracts with us on the basis of drawings and face-to-face discussions secure in the knowledge that Kocurek would come up with a viable solution. Secondly the people of Kocurek who have been prepared to work long and hard in all areas of the business to satisfy the customer's requirements.
We hope our customers both old and new will enjoy their tour of this site exploring what we do and keeping up to date with our latest developments.
