LATIN AMERICA | REGION REPORT


past. It may be that the time is now ripe for their patient efforts to be rewarded. Spanish manufacturers GH recently


celebrated the 20th anniversary of its presence in Brazil - and the 25th of its presence in Mexico. Pablo García González is their manager


in Brazil. “GH Cranes has a significant installed production capacity in Brazil, with technical resources comparable to those used in countries much more advanced than ours” he says. Their plant at Cabreuva, opened in 2011, is one of the most modern in South America. “Much of the equipment we manufacture ends up in the country’s main construction sites, in a wide variety of sectors. GH Cranes has already established itself in the most industrialised parts of Brazil as a recognised brand, very highly regarded for the quality and performance of its products. That is something difficult to achieve here, where many companies come and go.” There is, he says, a secret to success in that country: “It is perseverance. If GH were not the company that it is, probably during these 20 years in Brazil it would have already thrown in the towel. Other multinationals have entered and left this market on several occasions.” Those companies, he says, have worked with resellers, resulting in their brands suffering considerable wear and tear. GH though chose to grow organically. “We still have a lot of room to grow


organically, both in the sale of new equipment and in services. The priority is to consolidate the GH brand even more in Brazil, expanding our customer base significantly. We have set very aggressive growth and profitability targets up to 2025.” In Brazil GH have been supporting metro


works. Spanish construction company Acciona awarded them the contract for the supply of three bridge cranes for the expansion of Line 6 of the metro system there. One has been installed at PUC Cardoso Station in the centre of Sao Paulo PUC Cardoso Station: it is a special bridge crane 35 metres long, 14 metres high and with capacity of 30t. The GH story in Mexico is five years


longer but, in many ways, similar. Guillermo Ruiz has been with the company for 15 years, beginning as a stock clerk; he is currently deputy director of Operations and Business for GH Mexico. “In 2007 when I joined, we were only selling 15 cranes a year” he says. “We had few customers, and we were not very well known. Now we sell more than a hundred


Jaso supplied a steel foundry in Mexico


pieces of equipment a year and our brand is well-known in Mexico. That’s perhaps why this year will be the best ever for GH Mexico. By July we had already invoiced what we normally do in a year.” The achievement is all the more


remarkable in that Mexico has been experiencing a problematic post- pandemic spell. “The truth is that the last two years have been very difficult” says Ruiz. “Between the pandemic and political uncertainty, the economy has been paralysed in Mexico and, as a consequence, many companies have had to close down. Fortunately, we have never stopped working or had to make anyone redundant. We are the same 80 people who were working here before the pandemic. I think it is something that speaks very highly of our organisation.” GH does not limit itself to Brazil and


Mexico. Its coverage of the continent is complete. For example, in Peru it has also been involved in metro construction,


with cranes for the fabrication of concrete lining segments for the new Lima and Callao metro Line 2 project. It has supplied Bridge cranes inside the warehouse for the segment manufacturing processes, and gantry and semi-gantry cranes outside for storage and distribution. The cranes are designed for high-performance work groups and have specific grabs and lifting tools for the handling and transportation of the concrete segments. Another recent project in Peru was


supplying overhead gantry cranes to Llaxta, a company that has developed a new method for the industrial production of prefabricated affordable housing - more than 1,000 houses have already been sold. And in Argentina GH has supplied a 50t M7 gantry crane and a 25t m6 semi-gantry crane to SICA, an energy company that is diversifying into wind power: it now builds and supplies structural towers for wind turbines, according to the customer’s designs and specifications.


www.hoistmagazine.com | September 2024 | 33


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55