Established in 1979, Scarab Sweepers began life as an innovative family business. In the 1980s Scarab pioneered the development of a single-engine truck mounted road sweeper with the release of the Major 3000 arriving in 1988. And this innovation set the foundations for a company that, today, is the leading proponent of single-engine, eco-conscious products.

Scarab’s Business Development Manager, Andy Farley comments: ‘Even back in the 1980s when it wasn’t topical or fashionable, Scarab’s main ethos revolved around environmentally-friendly, single emission sweepers, and it remains as important to us now as it was back then.’

In 2011 Scarab became a member of the Fayat Group, and together with French company Mathieu, and Dutch company RAVO form the Fayat Environmental Solutions division. With over 150 years of combined experience, the division is committed to a clean future through the deployment of its broad range of sustainable sweepers for the compact, mid-size, truck-mounted, and specialist truck-mounted sectors.

‘Emissions control is becoming more and more important for operators and contractors, especially for those operating in areas like London, Birmingham and Edinburgh where Low Emission Zones are being introduced,’ notes Scarab’s Manager of Marketing and Product Development, Gary Kelleher. ‘We have remained strong with our message and as a result, we are seeing an increase in enquiries for our single-engine solutions. We are also working in parallel with ongoing developments in alternative fuels such as CNG, electrification, and hydrogen. We’ve always been at the forefront of technological advancements and we’ve had a lot of success with our CNG solutions across various areas of the UK and Europe where the infrastructure exists. While we continue to offer market-leading twin-engine solutions, our strategy is to support customers in transitioning from a twin-engine to a single-engine platform and then pave the way for the wide-scale introduction of alternative fuel solutions.’

Following on from the revolutionary early product developments, Scarab has continued to break new ground. In 2003, the company became the first road sweeper manufacturer to supply all its sweepers with a CANbus control and diagnostics system. Intuitive and easy to use, CANbus has changed the way Scarab machines are operated and maintained, providing users with comprehensive feedback including warnings and service reminders, as well as real-time monitoring and data logging capabilities. Gary explains, the company is always on the lookout for similar product development opportunities that ‘innovate’ rather than ‘copy’.

‘For us, a large portion of product development is always going to be driven by customer feedback. Being close to our customers is vital for us to understand how to improve quality, ease of maintenance, reduce the cost of ownership, as well as constantly refining the industry-leading operating experience for which we are renowned. We are also constantly looking beyond what is happening in the sweeper sector to see if we can find innovative environmental solutions elsewhere that we can adopt in our own industry.

“We are preparing a number of interesting new products for release in the next six to 12 months. They all revolve around introducing positive, value-added solutions for customers, whilst also keeping an eye on the long-term goal. We are on a mission to have the most environmentally friendly range of sweepers in the industry; that is something we strive to achieve and is at the core of our vision for all new product development projects.

As a truly global business, Scarab exports a large portion of its products to continental Europe and far beyond. Though the company focuses on single-engine solutions, it still offers their twin-engine counterparts, which have proven to be the product of choice from Chile to Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia to North America. Despite this, Gary claims that Scarab’s strategy is still to introduce its single-engine solutions to more international customers in the future.

“We understand that there is a place in the market for twin-engine sweepers and for that reason, we still have twin-engine solutions in our range, with both Stage V and IIIA engines options available” he states. “The M6 and Maven 65 export sweeper kits we offer, for example, have been designed specifically for easy and economical shipping worldwide. Due to their flexible design, they are also easily mounted on a huge range of chassis from any region. This allows customers access to Scarab's trusted quality anywhere in the world with minimal fuss.”

What unites all aspects of Scarab’s product offering is a central focus on high quality, high-performance sweepers, recognized as some of the industry’s best options in terms of economy and system control.