These days there are few manufacturing companies that can boast a history going back almost four centuries. Olofsfors AB is a member of this unique club and a world leader in manufacturing band tracks.
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That’s a remarkable amount of work hours for a single machine, the Norcar 600 owned by Erkki Rinne is taken well care of, it even has the original Diesel engine.
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Kieran Anders is a forestry contractor working in the lake district. His work involves hand cutting and extracting timber using a skidder and tractor-trailer forwarder.
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It is not possible to eliminate chain shot, but there are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.
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Arwel takes great pride in the fact that the mill has no waste whatsoever, “the peelings are used for children’s playgrounds, gardens and for farm animals in barns in the winter and the sawdust has multiple uses in gardens and farms as well.
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Timber hauliers need to encourage young blood in, and also look after the hauliers we have, we need make the sector a safe and positive place to work.
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Olofsfors was established in the mid 1700’s by John Jennings, at the time, one of Sweden’s most powerful men. While travelling in Sweden, he saw the potential for an ironworks in Västerbotten County, as it was ideally placed with mature forests for charcoal production and rivers for hydropower to drive the hammers and bellows. A blast furnace and forge was built alongside houses for the workers and the village was called Olofsfors.
In 1860 a local businessperson, Pehr Wikström, founded a steam sawmill company and soon afterwards became a part owner of the Olofsfors ironworks. Wikström’s share of the business steadily increased until he owned it outright. The company is still fully owned by the Wikström family and current owner, Anders, is the great-great grandson of Pehr.During the industrialisation of the 19th century, Olofsfors went from a small-scale ironworks to a mass producer of wagon wheels. The market changed in the early 1900’s and the company began to manufacture chains which were a popular product with many uses in forestry. It proved to be a strong market.
Through the centuries the company has remained at the forefront of steel production due to their Adapt and Change ethos. In the mid 1900’s, timber was transported by road, rather than chained together and floated on water. Mechanisation began to take over, so Olofsfors moved from manufacturing chains to band track production. The band tracks would fit over the tyres of forestry machines, increasing grip while reducing ground pressure. This was the birth of the world-famous ECO-Tracks brand. Other popular products soon followed which include SharqEdges (hard wearing edges for road graders and snow ploughs), SharqPlate (for extra-protection in buckets, feeders, and chutes) and Bruxite (hard wearing edges and bars for excavator buckets, wheel loaders and dump trucks).
The band tracks were manufactured in the original foundry up until the early 1980’s when a new production facility was commissioned and built to increase productivity and capacity. In 2011, Anders Wikström purchased guide bar manufacturer Iggesund Forest Ab.
Read all about my visit in the above mini magazine.
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Read all about our visit to Clark Tracks here
