TELE CRAWLERS Ӏ SECTOR REPORT
power. Beyond these crane hirers, there’s been the sale of a GTC 800EX to structural steel contractor M.J. Hughes based in Rotherham. As Tadano’s UK sales manager
Paul Goodall told Cranes Today, they are delighted at the positive reception given the 60 and 80-tonners and especially appreciate the repeat orders from such well-regarded customers. Naturally enough he is very keen to get his hands on other models from the range including the new 156-tonne GTC 1800-EX.
j After what at times seemed an agonisingly long wait, within the past two years Tadano has unveiled the first fruits of its new product plans – the GTC 600EX and GTC 800EX rated 60 and 80-tonnes but also renamed GTC 700 and 900 at 70 and 90 US tons for the North American market. Probably very wisely, Tadano’s
European tele crawler sales efforts began slowly and focussed on the UK market where they have an established organisation and no linguistic problems. The first sales were made in 2019 to two of the UKs best-established crane hirers – G.H. Johnson and Delden Cranes. Since then additional sales have been made and by our estimates Johnson now owns two each 60- and 80-tonners while Delden has seven 60-tonners and five 80-tonners. The very earliest deliveries were with Tier 4 diesels but since last year all have Stage 5
28 CRANES TODAY
Max Bögl Group taking delivery of a Liebherr LTR 1220 in Ehingen, Germany
MIRAID APPLICATIONS In the UK, especially for crane hirers like Weldex, road-widening projects have proven a real boon for tele crawlers such the Liebherr’s 60-tonne LTR 1060 – which the company has favoured to the extent of some 30-40 units. In Benelux the 60-tonne Liebherr and to a lesser extent Sennebogen’s 40 and 50-tonners have found favour with numerous building contractors on medium-sized pre- fabricated building construction projects while in Germany, for the main part, the 100-tonne Liebherr has proven the most popular for such applications. Barge work has also proven a highly-effective operation for work on inner-city rivers like the Thames. As wind turbine tower erection developed into a huge application area for lattice boom crawler cranes of 400-750-tonne crawler cranes, leading European crane hirers such as Sarens, Mammoet, Steil, Neeb and Wasel and numerous other German companies recognised the performance benefits of 100t, 120t and 220t tele crawlers as service cranes. Also in Germany the leading construction contractor Max Bogl has found the LTR 1220 highly-suited to its wind farm business and just added yet another unit to its fleet. The same application ‘marriage’ has
proven similarly attractive in North America’s wind farm business with major buyers including Doug William’s Buckner Heavy Lift Cranes LLC. Outside of Europe, it was
Sennebogen that was first to recognise the potential of Singapore and subsequently the Philippines, Hong Kong and Indonesia. In addition, in partnership with its well- established Sydney-based dealer PACE Cranes, it was able to develop an enviably strong position in Australia’s rental fleets. Down under, Sennebogen’s 40-tonne 643R followed by the 50-tonne 653E and 70-tonne 673E quickly became best-sellers. In a vast country like Australia top-quality product support has always been key to sales success and indeed that has been the case with the Sennebogen-PACE partnership. In 2015 Sennebogen also announced something of a coup, entering a marketing agreement with Grove covering the Americas. While this deal has its merits, especially for Sennebogen, given Grove’s lines of RTs and truck cranes and Manitowoc’s extensive experience building crawler cranes, it still came as something of a surprise that Grove decided against developing its own line.
THE CHINESE ARE COMING! It’s now a dozen years since FUWA (then known as Fushun) brought its tele crawler cranes to Europe, then in the hands of Holland-based Crane Business. However, after selling a handful of 55t and 65t teles FUWA seemingly withdrew. Already in those days China was home to several small makers of tele crawler cranes. Principal amongst these was Taishan Construction Machinery Co., a well-established maker of side- boom pipe layers to which it added small 12-25-tonne tele crawlers to
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