MARKET REPORT | UK


the pandemic that, like a lot of other businesses, we decided to minimise face-to-face contact with our clients and review our marketing spend. Street Crane continued to operate at full capacity with plenty of new enquiries, certainly, but many projects were mothballed, project managers were either furloughed or trying to manage from home so in many cases it was difficult to get sign-off and it was hard to get projects finalised. ‘Disjointed’ is a good word to describe it. It certainly wasn’t easy. “And yet the business was still there


despite what was being reported by some of the media. People were still trying to get business done; for us, the component side of our business exceeded our expectations throughout 2020. We design and manufacture cranes for the UK market but we also work with a network of more than 100 other crane manufacturers worldwide supplying them with crane kits and components: we supply the hoists, electrics and other key crane components and they manufacture the beam locally incorporating our kit, and for them, business did not seem to decline. “And now, in Britain, with a vaccine being


rolled out and a Brexit deal finally agreed, it seems to have raised people’s hopes with the feeling that there is light at the end of


the tunnel. This has opened the floodgates with enquiries for us and business is doing very well. Long may it continue. “Historically we tend to see a decline


in orders towards the end of the year where clients find money is tight just before Christmas, but after that a lot of businesses are in the position to spend their budgets before the end of the financial year in March. So in January and February we would normally see a wave of new enquiries and crane orders but this year Brexit has amplified it to almost an extraordinary extent. Now they are spending. So 2021 looks promising.” He is far from the only happy manager.


Street Cranes is a major manufacturer with worldwide sales and distribution but the effect spans the size range. Rob Muir runs the much smaller family-owned Hoists & Cranes UK, which from its base in Dorset supplies and installs and inspects lifting equipment throughout the UK. “On the first day of the lockdown in March I was working on a rooftop installation in London,” he says. “I had been the only person on the bus getting there, and from the roof I looked down at an empty pavement below me. I thought ‘There is clearly going to be no business for a while here’ so I put myself on leave for a month. As soon as I came back I was flat out, and I have been flat out ever


since. And now, at the start of the year, I am fully booked for six weeks ahead. “In the industry market, and in compliance and inspections, nothing has changed. We do LOLER compliance inspections; and hoist owners can defer those inspections if the equipment is out of use. I was expecting many deferrals from regular customers whose manufacturing might be on hold, but that has not happened either. I am still being asked to carry out those tasks. I think the general philosophy is ‘You have to keep going somehow’, and people have been doing that, finding ways to carry on working with social distancing in place. So for 2021 I am optimistic. There are a couple of big projects that we are bidding on. We are in a time when doing as you have always done will not be enough but as long as you are flexible, and are willing to diversify, the opportunities are there.” Ian Watson is MD of Merseyside company Linian Crane & Hoist, and finds similar sentiment among his clients. “Many got by in 2020 on service work,” he says, “but we concentrate on selling new equipment. That means we saw a fall in orders in 2020 with the pandemic; but it is coming back now. I think people are realising that things have to go on: you cannot postpone things forever and at


R An overhead crane by Linian installed in a skyscraper construction site in London www.hoistmagazine.com | February 2021 | 23


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