FEATURE | YEAR IN REVIEW
wraps up the expertise around what is necessary for it to accelerate its delivery of synergies without disrupting its core business and to enable rapid deleveraging. Konecranes noted that, in the second quarter, it had acquired Catalonia-based Polipastos y Instalaciones MEG SL. Conductix-Wampfler’s Roberts expects that
next year will be an interesting year for the overhead crane and hoist market with pockets of growth across the US. In fact, he believes that if the unstable economics situation with the tariffs can be adjusted, he thinks that the market could return to the numbers that were witnessed in previous years.
Reshoring of crane manufacturing to the US has not yet occurred due to their global nature. During his company’s recent earnings
financing charges will trend going forward. Given questions about inflation (and the tariffs’ impact upon inflation) and the future direction of the US economy, at this point it is uncertain whether the US Federal Reserve will continue to cut interest rates to boost the economy (as the Trump administration wants them to do) or if they will keep them steady or even increase them to control inflation.
Growth on the horizon? While one of the Trump administration’s big goals – particularly when it comes to its tariffs – is reshoring manufacturing, Piso noted that to date there has not been any major reshoring of crane and hoist manufacturing – at least not yet. “In general, crane builders have been, and continue to be, global in nature,” says Piso. “However, from a crane industry vendor perspective, the tariffs and offshoring of their products have created certain supply chain issues that the industry haven’t greatly been able to solve yet.” He notes that there has been some talk about onshoring, “But that isn’t something that you can just snap your fingers and do. It takes time.”
Another somewhat mixed bag for the crane and hoist industry revolves around merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. Beightol maintains that, while there had been a fair amount of M&A activity over the past few years the rate of such activity – both for crane builders and distributors – it was not as great this year as it had been in 2024, including Mazzella Companies’ acquisition of Piedmont Hoist & Crane, which now operates as Mazzella Piedmont. That said, a major deal – the acquisition of
Kito Crosby by Columbus McKinnon – while delayed three months from initial expectations, is anticipated to be finalised early next year (the end of Columbus McKinnon’s fiscal year).
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conference call, David Wilson, Columbus McKinnon’s president and chief executive officer, said that this “strategic combination” will scale his company’s business, enable synergies, expand customer capabilities and accelerate its Intelligent Motion strategy over time and will enable reinvestment in its business. He said that Columbus McKinnon has already
made progress from a financing, integration planning and regulatory standpoint and is taking full advantage of the time that it has between now and the close of the deal to have “day one readiness.”
Also, he said that the company is working with a group of external resources to make sure that it
But while Gorbel’s Beightol agrees that the industry is poised for a solid year in 2026, it is hard to predict given that there continues to be a lot of uncertainty related to such things as rising costs, tariffs, international relations and consumer sentiment. “There are many reasons to feel confident about US manufacturing,” says Beightol. “But early in 2025, we thought this year would be better than it was.” According to Beightol, the cautious optimism about 2026 is currently really just a wish. “The rollercoaster ride that we had this year really needs to settle down to allow people to make decisions based upon the best data that we have available,” he explains. “But things are not going to change immediately. First, we need for things to be solid – something that we can bank on. But I don’t think that we have that yet.” For Piso, however, while it is still in somewhat of a wait and see mode, he is optimistic that, helped by the governmental policies, the crane and hoist industry will continue to grow through 2027, 2028 or 2029.
Despite its global footprint, US tariffs are still impacting customers’ decision-making.
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