It appears that supply of the mini-crawlers coming from Japanese manufacturers – primarily Unic and Maeda, but also IHI, Kato and Komatsu (CT Dec03, pp16-17) – has not satisfied demand.
Three years ago Italian customised crane manufacturer Imai brought out its first mini-crawler crane. For about the previous seven years, a sister company in its parent group Ormet had mounted Maxilift cranes on wheeled trolleys.
The first model launched in the Minicrane range was the 3.5tm SLM 650C. Fifteen have since been built.
Last year, Imai developed the 260C+, which features a 500kg-capacity remote-controlled load manipulator that can be installed on the end of the hook to help manoeuvre glazing sections. Because of the possibility of side loads, Imai needed a more rigid boom and fabricated the boom itself. It has also sold about 15 machines, though only three with a manipulator.
Glass installation applications
‘Ninety per cent of our customers are glass installers. But the machine is used to install any kind of steel structure,’ says Imai’s Marco Zava.
The company expects to begin serial manufacture of a prototype shown at the Italian show SAIE before the end of the year. The 1.9tm SPD 160C+ uses a specially-commissioned Maxilift boom to lift a load to 4.1m outreach. It also has a .4 sq m carry platform. Although the prototype was sold to an unnamed Italian company, the crane is so new it is still being tested, Zava reports.
The company is also developing a 5.1tm mini-crawler that it expects to launch early next year. Although the crane’s planned weight of 2.8t is 100kg heavier than the 260C+, it is intended to work outside and set up on slopes of up to 25 degrees. Zava says that the company is building the boom itself because Maxilift does not make a boom that size.
However, it will not be the largest minicrane the company has made – that honour goes to the SLM 1000C, a 10.5tm one-off delivered to the UK in May for curtain-wall installer Permasteelisa.
In October, the company signed Italian equipment distributor CTE to handle European sales for the serial production cranes – particularly the SPD 160C+ and SPD 260C+. It will continue to market customised cranes itself. The company is looking for distribution outside Europe to handle US and Australian requests.
He adds that the company will make about 50 cranes this year at an average price of Euro 50,000 each. To cope with the demand, the company plans to contract out sub-assembly to neighbouring companies in northern Italy, and assemble the machines in-house.
Frank Van Bouwel says the idea for the crawler-mounted loader crane came from a customer, and was not his own.
Van Bouwel has built four 3tm Asterix 3010/2S2 cranes, including a one-off machine made two years ago for Belgian client Danny Lauryssens Glass to lift glass and aluminium units. That machine followed two years after Van Bouwel supplied Lauryssens with a Maxilift 021 loader crane mounted on a wheeled trolley, a design similar to that of Imai.
Last month the company delivered the third crane. The fourth machine made, displayed at the Italian SAIE show last month, is with Benelli for technical changes. Van Bouwel says he has two other orders for cranes to be delivered in March. Benelli also has another order, says export manager Giovanni Barbieri. He adds that the joint venture plans to start production of 10 units this month.
The crane appears to be the first mini-crawler with an articulated boom, allowing it a better outreach in limited-space. It can lift 300kg to a height of 7.4m and has an outreach of 5.8m with manual extensions.
Benelli Gru supplies the crane booms – using a mostly standard upper section and modified main boom and base – and Van Bouwel assembles the machine base and outriggers. The crane is controlled with an Imet radio remote control. A German-built Gemmo crawler track system propels the crane.
Under the terms of the deal, both Van Bouwel and Benelli market and sell the crane. Van Bouwel distributes Benelli cranes in Belgium, and also Terex-Atlas cranes, Pesci, Maxilift small cranes, Terex Schaeff, and Dalby hook loaders, among other heavy machinery.
Other companies have been scrambling to enter the market over the past year. Italian yard crane manufacturer Valla launched its first mini-crawler last year (CT Aug04, p14), through UK dealer Peter Hird & Sons, now called Valla Cranes UK. Although Valla has since sold one to its US subsidiary for a large (unnamed)construction company, the American market potential remains a mystery. ‘Ask me in a year,’ says Antonio Valla. Purchase of these cranes is often driven by health and safety legislation, he says.
Hird and his team have been angling the cranes toward local government for gravestone lifting.
‘Nationally there is a huge problem with unsafe gravestones,’ says Bob Elcome, sales manager of Valla Cranes UK. ‘It has led to one fairly recent fatality in Harrogate when a gravestone fell on a child who climbed on it. Now, local authorities are undertaking programmes reinstating or laying down gravestones.’
Market in cemeteries
One council taking the lead is Leeds City Council, which has estimated it has 500,000 gravestones in 19 cemeteries, and is planning to fix ten per day with its 2t capacity Valla 20 TRX.
It is not the only player in this recession-proof market. Last year, the small German equipment manufacturer Riebsamen launched its second Hiab-based mini-crawler crane, a 3.2tm crane called the Power-Multi. As of last month, it had sold three. The firm has been making mini-crawlers with Hiab loader cranes for six years, primarily for work in cemeteries setting gravestones in place. It has sold 120 units of its older 2.6tm model, the Euro-Multi, which runs on a 13HP petrol engine. Production volumes are about 20 machines in total per year.
Starting this month another set of mini-crawlers will be made in Germany, although to UKdesigns. They are the first new 8t capacity Starlifter mini-crawler cranes to be made since Tim Sparrow and his father Gordon bought the rights to manufacture the designs and set up Starlifter Cranes to sell them. Last year, Tim Sparrow cut a deal with US-based telescopic-boom crawler crane manufacturer Spandeck/Mantis to make the cranes. Sparrow says that a second German manufacturing operation was set up because of demand.
In Germany, Herbert Krug welds together substructure and boom and assembles the crane from off-the-shelf parts, says Sparrow, to the original spec. The first German machine will be ready in January. As of mid-October, eight units were reserved, including three for Sparrow’s own rental fleet.
In the US, Spandeck/Mantis will produce the first USStarlifter unit after the prototype in January, with a 10-unit series to follow, says Sparrow.
