One new market that was emerging in the early 1990s was Eastern Europe, which had recently shaken off Soviet communism. Aurel Popoviciu, writing on behalf of a group of engineers at a crane institute in Timosoara, Romania, explained how they had formed an independent engineering team to develop lifting products in the new free market.

Popoviciu and his colleagues weren’t the only ones looking to the new opportunities opened up with the fall of the Berlin Wall. GCM 600, formed out of the Iron Fairy and Jones cranes businesses, won a contract to supply five Jones superstructures to Kamaz, for a new line of Jones Kamaz cranes. The deal had first been discussed two years earlier, while the USSR was still intact, and had taken 18 months of prototyping work.

In the US, Aldwinckle wrote, manufacturers were impatient to see presidential elections completed and a period of stability begin. Grove president and COO Donald B Zorn told Aldwinckle "The European market is in chaos. We still don’t know, for instance, what the future holds for the European monetary system [the predecessor of the Euro]."

A cheap dollar made exports easier, but posed a problem for companies looking for investment. US manufacturers were still innovating though: Grove’s rival, Manitowoc, had just launched two new additions to its M-Series, the ‘eye-catching’ seven-steering-axle M-250T lattice boom truck crane, and a 1,200t crawler, the M-1200R, featuring its newly patented ‘Ringer’ system.

Wilmington, North Carolina, based American Crane Corporation was picking up export sales: these had soared from a baseline of around 60%, up to 90% in the preceding eight months. The company had exported cranes to The Netherlands and the Middle East. Noting inquiries from the CIS (former Soviet Union) and China, sales manager Rich O’Connell said, "The cold war has melted down, but it’s still too early to see what the real impact is going to be."

Link-Belt had just bucked the trend of rough terrain market by launching three new models, along with a new crawler, and was developing a new truck crane. Link-Belt’s vice president of marketing, Robert G Harvell, told Aldwinckle, "It’s a very, very difficult time to the crane industry and there is a definite conservatism in the market. Forecasting is becoming increasingly important, but we’re cautiously optimistic."