FAE Stories - Croatia
Modernizing the Hrvatski Leskovac - Karlovac railway
On a major railroad construction site, an FAE UMM/S/HP assists the main Croatian contributor.
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Sanac d.o.o. — based in Rugvica, Croatia, near Zagreb — operates in the roadwork, civil construction and forestry industries. With annual revenue of more than €5-6 million and 70 employees, Sanac is one of the most prominent businesses in Croatia.
"We decided to add the first FAEs to our fleet" explains Ante Sučić, Director of Sanac. "We now have four UMM/S/HP 250s, one STCH 225, one MTH 225, and two PMM/EX 150s. To think we bought our first FAE just because we liked that it was gray! But then we tried it and compared it to the competitor model that we had at the time and were impressed by the innovative technical solutions, reliability, and quality of our FAE mulcher. Since then, we've bought many more.”
Today, FAE machines support Sanac in a wide range of land clearing and construction jobs, like dirt road clearing and stone crushing. However, at the heart of today's article is a very special construction site, located between Zagreb and Karlovac, where they are building the second track of the new Hrvatski Leskovac - Karlovac railroad.
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"We were called in to clear the vegetation where they’re building the second track," says Sučić. “We have been working for HŽ Infrastruktura d.o.o. (Croatia’s national railroad operator) and for the main contractor of the project, Strabag d.o.o. The project includes upgrading a major rail line, part of the European corridor connecting Central and Eastern Europe with Croatia's largest seaport, Rijeka. The project is financed with EU funds, for around €300 million in total.”
At 44 km long, the Hrvatski Leskovac - Karlovac railroad is the largest infrastructure project in the history of modern-day Croatia. The project includes rebuilding the existing line, building a new track, rebuilding several existing stations and stops, installing new safety and signaling devices, and more. The Hrvatski Leskovac - Karlovac railroad is the most complex and expensive part of this project to build a lowland railroad from Rijeka to Botovo on the Hungarian border. It is estimated that the modernization and construction of the entire rail line from Zagreb to Rijeka will be completed in 2035.
For Sanac's work, surface vegetation and stumps were removed across an expansive 600,000 m2. That’s a big construction site!
"On site, we used our FAE UMM/S/HP 250 with a Fendt 933 tractor, both purchased new in 2020 thanks to EU co-funding," Sučić explains. “Using the UMM/S/HP 250, we worked the ground with an average fuel consumption of about 15 liters an hour. The vegetation we cut ranged in trunk diameter from 3 to 15 cm. We cut larger trees by hand with chainsaws.”
Sanac will be busy with the construction of the Hrvatski Leskovac - Karlovac railroad (which began in October 2022) for a long time still, given that the project is set to be completed in roughly 30 months. What are their thoughts on the performance of their FAE machines on the construction site? “All I can say is, we love our FAE machines and constantly push them to their limits because we know they can handle it!”
Thanks to: www.pvwerk.de
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