Holp only develops products if they lead to an average performance increase of at least 25%. The company always makes work easier right from the start and thus contribute to increasing your productivity and cost-effectiveness: Holp has the DNA of an excavator operator and think like entrepreneurs at the same time.
Interview with Günter Holp, Owner & CEO of Holp GmbH.
Easy Engineering: A brief description of the company and its activities.
Günter Holp: Holp is a family-owned business from the Swabian Murrhardt (South of Germany), which has been founded in 1979 by my father Franz Holp as an earthmoving business which specialized in road building. In 1990, I began to work for the parental company. In 1992 I tested tilt rotators for the first time and began to develop attachments: Based on my experiences and needs as an excavator operator I built at first a special trench drag bucket for my own use – to increase my performance. Since then, we develop attachments that make life for the excavator driver easier and work on the sites more efficient.
E.E: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
G.H: Since 2007 our rotary drive named RotoTop is produced. The main aim of this product is the fact that excavators obtain the ability for a 3-D-movement by pure rotation – as result of the combination of excavator kinematics with endless 360°-rotation. The result is a great freedom of movement e.g. when working with a backhoe, which results in more productivity and less need of workforce, time and fuels. Our products are used in all kinds of the construction sector, like canal construction, road construction, earth works, foundation engineering or tunnel construction but also in demolition, landscaping or in municipal services.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
G.H: With the help of RotoTop, the entrepreneur benefits – in comparison to using a tilt rotator – of the hardly noticeable loss in performance due to a very flat construction and low weight and gets a remarkable increase in productivity due to endless rotation. At the same time operators very quickly and intuitively learn how to use the RotoTop like a “wrist” on the excavator’s arm. With the help of RotoTop you cope with all tasks of a standard building site, more agility and flexibility is only needed with very special applications which apply to about 5 percent of all sites. For these cases we offer our RotoX, which is only fixed to the excavator when really needed. Since a few years Holp is also selling internationally, from spring 2023 the RotoTop is also available with dealers in Great Britain, the first customers working with it are really amazed by the gained efficiency.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
G.H: The RotoTop is available for excavators with a working weight from 600kg up to 45 tons. Our special buckets like the MultiGrip, the ProfilLöffel, the VarioLöffel, the BankettLöffel and our CutWheel are also available in different excavator sizes. We also offer a special product called KranFix to make forest cranes more flexible to work with different attachments.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
G.H: At the moment there is no point nagging about the difficult situation in construction sector in Germany. Being a small specialized company, we always have to compete with the manufacturers of the tilt rotator. As our product literally leads entrepreneurs to save money, the market situation does not affect us more than the general understanding of customers concerning the effect of our rotary drive. A lot of people still think that they are better off using a tilt, which can do even more than a human wrist, but it has a lot of other disadvantages (weight, building up high, huge loss of the excavator power).
As soon as people get the point and really understand how endless rotation works, they always want the RotoTop built on each excavator they own. Some customers told us that the RotoTop paid himself off after about 500 hours, after that it just adds to the profit. This is why our focus is fixed on showing everybody how it works and how it affects productivity. This is why we have a test location next to our company, where our customers can test the RotoTop and die other attachments in different work situations. In Germany we are market leader in products with pure rotation. At the moment we are busy to enlarge our dealer network in different European countries.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
G.H: Companies within the building sector are suffering from the need of educated employees which are hard to get, from rising prices and a hard fight to meet all requirements and time lines. Our RotoTop helps to save time, fuels and, above all manpower to get work done in shorter time and thus with more efficiency. It is always the same: Once we enter a new market or country, it takes a bit, until people really do understand the effect of pure rotation, but once this happens, demand will increase quickly. In the UK some magazines got it straight to the point, writing about the “Holp revolution”. That’s what it really is: A revolution in working efficiently with an excavator and RotoTop towards more productivity.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
G.H: All of our products are innovative, because they increase efficiency and productivity and they completely change work for the excavator driver: Often, just one excavator can manage the whole work on a site, without needing manual work anymore – and all this in less time than before with more resources.
And, what’s more, our quality is not only convincing, but proved, so we can grant three years or 3.000 hours of warranty on the RotoTop, even if hard tasks like milling are constantly performed. Hard tasks are no problem at all, because we have a great number of rotary joints with big diameter to get the greatest quantity of oil to the attachment. And there is yet another special feature: Once the time of an excavator has gone by, it doesn’t apply as well to the RotoTop – with about 20% of the original price the RotoTop can be made up for a second excavators live.
E.E: What estimations do you have for the rest of 2023?
G.H: We are sure to continue our way of organic growth with a constantly larger network of dealers in Germany and abroad: Years ago, we started off with the product for a niche, our goal is to establish endless rotation – with a constantly installed RotoTop on the excavator arm – as new standard. At the moment we are very happy with the development in the UK, so we will make sure to enforce the development and go forward in other countries as well. As we just moved into our new building, we have increased our production capacity considerably to meet the increased demand.
