CheckProof Releases Construction Materials Industry Report 2026
Hillhead is a behemoth exhibition with a permanent fixture in the construction materials calendar. The setting alone - a working quarry, always makes a trip to Hillhead one to remember.
The 2026 edition was the largest in the show's 44-year history. 627 exhibitors, thousands of visitors over three days, and a record that the 2024 edition had set was comfortably broken by the time the gates closed on 25 June.
As exhibitors and proud sponsors of Hillhead 2026, here's what CheckProof’s team took away from three days on the floor.
The exhibition floor
This year, the Registration Pavilion had been extended to handle demand with a new AI-powered visitor planning tool, letting visitors match their interests to exhibitors before arrival. And for the first time, the Quarry Face hosted a curated demonstration programme with live machine operation, expert commentary from the operators, and a giant LED screen so the crowd could follow the detail from a distance.
Beyond the Quarry Face, the Rock Processing demo area ran a full programme across all three days, and the broader exhibition covered everything from crushing and screening to wet processing, dust suppression, digital tools, safety systems, and specialist attachments.
Three major themes that stood out
Three themes cut across the exhibition floor, the demo programme, and the conversations at stands this year.
Electrification
This was the year electric machinery too center stage. LiuGong brought a fully integrated battery-electric fleet: the DR50CE rigid mining truck, 4280DE motor grader, and 8110TE wheel loader, operating together as a connected zero-emission production system at the Quarry Face. Wirtgen introduced what it described as the UK’s first modular battery-electric road construction machines: a cold milling unit, a paver, and a tandem roller, running co-ordinated zero-emission operations. SBM’s REMAX 450 hybrid diesel-electric mobile impact crusher processed limestone at up to 450 tonnes per hour on less than 25 litres of diesel per hour.
These were not prototypes, but working machines, already deployed in a live quarry. That distinction felt significant.
Intelligence and connectivity
The conversation around data and machine connectivity has been building for years at Hillhead. This edition felt like a step change. Finning UK & Ireland dedicated a zone of their stand specifically to digital tools, connectivity, and machine intelligence. Several manufacturers were framing their equipment not just in terms of what it does, but what it tells you, hours, cycles, fault conditions, service windows. The expectation that equipment should be part of a connected maintenance workflow, not just a standalone machine, was increasingly visible across the exhibition.
This is exactly how CheckProof envisage and facilitate a smarter working quarry: taking what the machine reports and turning it into structured maintenance actions, traceable records, and closing the loop on work orders across operations.
Sustainability with substance
Lower-carbon materials, clay recovery, recycled content in new equipment, these themes appeared across the show floor in ways. CDE returned with the ProPress X4-200 filter press, highlighting growing potential for recovered clay in lower-carbon construction. Volvo announced increased recycled materials in its new heavy-duty trucks. Established conveyor specialists like Wright Engineering and Martin Engineering, focused on reducing material waste and carryback at the belt level, while RKX Rock Extraction Ltd, made their Hillhead debut with the electric RKX-Volt 100k extraction system. The drive toward lower environmental impact was coming from every corner of the supply chain, not just the major OEMs.
Standout Launches and Debuts
JCB - its largest wheel loaders to date
JCB unveiled the 480 and 490 wheel loaders, the largest in the company’s history with payloads of 8,000 kg and 9,000 kg respectively, continuously variable transmission, and an updated loader arm design. The 520X, JCB’s largest-ever X-Series crawler excavator, was also shown for the first time. For a market watching payload capacity and total cost of ownership, these were significant machines to arrive at the same time.
MAGNA at Hillhead for the first time
The Terex brand focused on large-scale crushing, screening and conveying made its Hillhead debut, having first shown at ConExpo earlier in the year. The MT400C large cone crusher and MT6S heavy-duty scalping screen appeared at a major UK exhibition for the first time.
E-MAK — a full asphalt plant, built and sold on site
One of the talking points of Day 2 was E-MAK’s decision to build a complete asphalt plant on the show floor and stage a live sale to Green Circle Concrete which drew a crowd. “Only at Hillhead” as an audience member commented, where there’s space to pull it off.
McLanahan - the Discovery Wash Plant
An entry-level washing solution aimed at operations that want to improve product quality without large-scale infrastructure investment. The kind of product that opens the market rather than just serving the top end of it.
Astec - eight new European launches
Astec introduced no less than eight new innovations across crushing, screening, washing, and material handling, all designed for the European market. Highlights included the Frontier tracked mobile crushing and screening range, the Kolberg Eco-Scrub modular washing solution, and the European debut of its patented Vari-Frequency Technology.
Volvo CE - electric haulers entering serial production
Volvo CE used Hillhead to signal that its electric machines will now be widely available. The A30 Electric and A40 Electric articulated haulers, the world's first electric articulated haulers of their size class, entered serial production, alongside the updated L90 Electric wheel loader and the EWR150 Electric wheeled excavator.
CheckProof at Hillhead
The CheckProof stand saw strong footfall across all three days, with Tom O'Boyle, Joe Cage, Richard Wake and Andrew Hogg representing the team on the floor. The team also had a mini quarry display at the stand which drew consistent interest throughout the show.
CheckProof’s Chief Product Officer, Tom O’Boyle was interviewed by Pit & Quarry during the show to discuss CheckProof’s latest safety innovations, including Safety Alerts and the AI Checklist Builder. The conversation covered how these tools address a pattern that shows up consistently in quarry and plant operations: the gap between what happens in the field and what reaches the people who need to act on it. The video is linked below.
It was also a show with an unusually high density of existing customers at the stand. Heidelberg Materials, Breedon Group, Cemex, Wainwright, Clubb Sand & Gravel, and Atlantic Pumps all visited across the three days. Winstone Aggregates travelled from New Zealand specifically for the event, one of those moments that reminds you Hillhead pulls a genuinely international crowd.
PowerX Equipment also had CheckProof featured on their stand video, which was good to see — the partnership visible in a live show environment.
It felt less like meeting customers and more like catching up with friends. That’s not a small thing. It’s the result of years of building real working relationships with the people running these operations.
On the digital and technology side, the interest from visitors mirrored what the broader show was reflecting: operations teams increasingly expect their systems to talk to each other. The conversations often came back to ‘how does this connect to what we already have’ and ‘can this run across multiple sites?’. That’s a useful indicator of where the market is.
At midday on the final day, CheckProof drew the winner of the iPad prize draw, a business card drop that had run throughout the show. The winner was Ross Hayward from Chepstow Plant International.
A Few Observations from the Floor
Hillhead is always a useful temperature check, on which machines are generating genuine excitement, and on the challenges the industry is grappling with.
Electrification is no longer a future story, with manufacturers confident enough to make it work in front of 20,000 industry visitors at a live quarry. The questions have shifted from ‘will this work’ to ‘what does this cost to operate and maintain over time’.
Skills and staffing came up repeatedly in corridor conversations, as a live operational issue. Equipment that is easier to operate, checklists that reduce dependency on specific knowledge holders, systems that help newer team members follow established processes, are therefore increasingly critical.
The appetite for consolidation across digital tools was also evident. Operations teams are not looking for more systems, but for fewer, better-connected ones.
See You in 2028
For CheckProof, Hillhead is a real highlight.
This year, the appetite to digitize processes was made very clear as a practical need from the people running operations day to day. That shift is worth paying attention to.
We’ll be back!
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