NOVEMBER 2022 Ӏ CRANE HISTORY


ANNIVERSARY


In 2001 Tadano,


Sumitomo and Hitachi formed a global alliance. This is the back page Tadano advert from the May 2001 issue of Cranes Today


telescopics for decades to come. A year later Mannesmann


j reorganization plan under which


Grove’s primary creditors, Chase Manhattan Bank, became majority owner was accepted by the courts. The 1990s were a challenging


decade for Europe’s tower crane industry. In 1993 France was in deep recession and, in 1995, the German economy drifted into a downturn. Things improved in 1997 with Potain’s sales increasing 14% to FF57 billion. In 1998 Potain acquired the


emerging German manufacturer BKT, bringing topless and luffing boom tower cranes to the French company’s line. Potain’s crane sales increased from 2,100 in 1998 to 2,600 in 1999. By 2000 over some three years Potain had renewed some 80% of its crane line. Meanwhile in Europe, as


worldwide demand for all terrains had gone from strength to strength, Liebherr reinforced its leadership of this important sector. In 2001 the firm opened a massive extension to its Ehingen factory – enough to increase capacity from 800 to 1400 new all terrains per years. Even so, during the late-1990s and early 2000s the leading German manufacturers continued to exert their technical prowess. In 1996 Liebherr introduced its oval-shaped ‘Oviform’ boom with its single tele cylinder ‘Telematik’ extension system that would become a hallmark of all Liebherr


60 CRANES TODAY


Demag introduced another ground- breaking new design, the first ‘City’ type compact all terrain: the 25-tonne AC 75. It was soon followed by the three-axle the 40-tonne AC 40-1 which went on to sell more than a thousand units. In 2001 Demag followed up with the Sideways Superlift (SSL) that would revolutionise the lifting performance of large-sized telescopics. This led to a patent dispute with Liebherr over their ‘Y Guy’ which was subsequently settled out of court.


GLOBAL ALLIANCE In 2001, the Japanese crane manufacturers, Tadano, Sumitomo and Hitachi formed a global alliance. Though this revolved primarily around lattice boom mobile cranes it also involved the hydraulic mobile crane businesses of Tadano in Japan, Tadano-Faun in Germany and Link-Belt in the US. In March 2002 it was announced


that the Sumitomo and Hitachi crane businesses would merge. The following year a supply agreement for Kobelco crawler cranes to Manitowoc was announced. This proved highly successful and was only terminated in 2018. Following Keystone’s failure


to turnaround Grove, it sold the business for $270 million in March 2002 to the leading US lattice boom crane manufacturer Manitowoc who the previous year had acquired the leading French tower crane manufacturer, Potain. Changes in the ownership of Mannesmann saw the Demag crane business become an unwanted division of Siemens- Bosch and the acquisition of Grove with its German (ex-Krupp) unit by Manitowoc polarised the industry. In May 2002, Siemens agreed to sell the Demag mobile crane business to Terex for $150 million.


Beginning in the mid-2000s the


crane world found itself exposed to the first rumblings of an offensive from the emerging Chinese crane industry. This should not have come as a shock to experienced executives as many had already seen limited access to the Chinese. The first Chinese truck cranes from XCMG and Zoomlion and tower cranes from Yongmao and Zoomlion arrived courtesy of Dutch crane traders and were notable for inflated claims and low prices. Unfortunately some rather naïve European crane buyers were sucked in by the apparently attractive offers and soon found themselves with products with, at- best, scant service support.


TOWER POWER By the mid-2010s, construction methods of the leading nations of SE Asia were strongly evolving to PVVC (Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction) with the motive of improving safety and productivity in building construction by using pre-cast concrete elements of up to 40-tonnes weight. Naturally this drove demand for significantly larger tower cranes. As well as Potain and Liebherr, Yongmao was a beneficiary – especially in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. New luffing boom cranes of


20 to 25-tonnes capacity and flat tops of 40, 50 and 60 tonnes capacity quickly emerged and proved very popular. For local rental companies, their rates were under pressure from the growing challenge of low-cost Chinese tower cranes. Business also remained healthy in the region’s petro-chem, oil and gas and offshore industries which continued to employ large crawler and all terrain cranes from the leading crane hirers. Developments in self-erecting tower cranes included the


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