Comedil re-enters 'recovering' Korea

Gru Comedil, the Italian tower crane manufacturer owned by Terex, has re-entered the South Korean market with the appointment of Tower Land is its distributor there.

Tower Land is a rental company with a fleet of approximately 80 tower cranes, including Potain and Peiner models as well as Comedils. It is owned by CJ Han.

Until the market collapsed in 1998, Comedil was represented in Korea by Kumkang, which also had a license to manufacture H20 tower sections for some of Comedil's cranes.

Comedil is now exploring the possibility of resuming local manufacture of tower sections.

Explaining the return to Korea, Comedil export manager Mariano Moritsch said: 'There are no good market statistics for tower cranes, but I know that the market is recovering. First of all, we are selling spare parts for old cranes, which means that they are back at work. Also, we sold seven cranes in 2002 and have orders for 10 more.'

Moritsch said that Kumkand had left the crane business and had no desire to return. The deal with Tower Land was assisted by Comedil's long-serving Singapore agent Roger Poon of Y&P.

Improvement of the market in Korea was confirmed by Potain Eric Etchart, Manitowoc Crane Group's executive vice president for Asia and general manager of its tower crane factory in China, said that after initial market resistance to Chinese-built cranes, Zhangjiagang Potain has now begun to export. 'This [past] year Korea has been a good market,' he said. 'We invited customers to see the factory and immediately there was a big change and the rental companies started buying.'