Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe) NV (HCME) is a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. (HCM) and was founded in 1972 in Oosterhout, the Netherlands. Hitachi is responsible for the production, sales and marketing of construction equipment in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

In 1968, Hitachi appointed Hovers Constructie NV in Tilburg as the exclusive importer of Hitachi's construction equipment in Benelux. In the 1970s, the company launched a number of locally designed crawler cranes that gained worldwide attention.

In 1972 Hovers Constructie NV went bankrupt. To maintain the support of the existing customer, HCME was established on April 1, 1972 as HCM's first foreign branch office. Responsible for both the production of locally designed products and the distribution of all HCM products to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the company opened a parts Distribution Center in 1981.

In 1986, a manufacturing, distribution and marketing partnership for factory machinery was agreed between Fiat and Hitachi, with Fiat's plan to build a limited number of Hitachi tracked excavators at its factory in San Mauro, Italy. In the 1990s, HCME increased production at Oosterhout and began to manufacture mini excavators, and the expansion of this scope to Russia led to a threefold increase in production volume. In October 1998, Euclid and Hitachi agreed on a distribution partnership. This resulted in the opening of a new parts distribution center in Oosterhout in April 2000 so that HMCE could take over the exclusive distribution of Euclid dump truck parts. In March 2001, Hitachi and Fiat terminated their joint venture relationship.