Number one

Mobile cranes
China’s leading mobile crane manufacturer is Xuzhou Heavy Machinery Works, part of the Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group (XCMG), based in Jiangsu Province. XCMG was founded in 1989 and, aided by cooperation agreements with overseas companies that include Caterpillar and Krupp, grew to have a turnover of $762m by 2001 and $1.57bn in the first 10 months of 2003. It is aiming for $2.4bn in sales this year. XCMG is China’s leading producer of construction machinery, in general, as well as cranes. The parent company has nine overseas representative offices and three joint ventures in foreign countries. It exports $10m worth of machinery to markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South and North America.

In the mid 1990s XCMG had a cooperation agreement with Liebherr Ehingen for mobile cranes. Xuzhou’s cranes, however, are not widely exported, despite it being the world’s largest volume manufacturer of mobile cranes, producing about 4,000 units in 2003, giving it a 50% market share in China.

At the BICES construction machinery exhibition in Beijing in October 2003, Xuzhou showed its newest model, the QY65K, a 65t capacity hydraulic truck crane with a five-section boom and 58m tip height. Its largest standard model is the 80t rated QY80, whose main boom extends to 44m. With a two-section jib (9.5m-16m) it has a maximum lifting height of 60m. Alongside a wide range of truck cranes, Xuzhou also offers a 25t rough terrain (or tyre crane, in Chinese jargon), the QLY25. It also has 35t and 50t lattice boom crawler cranes in its product line-up. (Crane model names in China give little or no clue to the manufacturer – truck cranes are mostly all QY, tower cranes are usually QTZ.)

In 1996, Xuzhou produced China’s biggest ever truck crane, the 160t rated, telescopic boom QUY160T. Just one unit was produced. And in mid 2003 it sold a 125t machine to a customer in Shandong province. Generally, however, the Chinese manufacturers concentrate on machines up to about 60t capacity. The market for cranes above 100t is where the overseas manufacturers step in, as discussed below. According to one Western authority on the Chinese crane industry, the mobile crane manufacturer that comes closest to international quality standards is Puyuan, China’s second biggest producer. Puyuan, based in Hunan, also produces equipment ranging from aerial work platforms to pile drivers. On 30 August 2003 the main operational assets of Puyuan Group Corporation were acquired by Zoomlion Heavy Industry & Science, which could open new opportunities for it. Zoomlion produces concrete handling machines, ranging from concrete pumps to tower cranes and pavers, and its major shareholder is Changsha Construction Machinery Research Institute. Puyuan joining with Zoomlion may be the first step in a much needed rationalisation of the country’s construction machinery industry. Every town in China, it seems, has a local state-owned machinery manufacturer, of which only a few approach international standards.

Puyuan offers a range of 22 hydraulic truck crane models up to the 100t QY100H. At the BICES show it exhibited its QY12H (12t) and, just like XCMG, a 65 tonner. Puyuan’s QY65H has a 41.5m main boom and a 56m maximum lifting height with bi-fold jib attached. By August 2003 some 32 units of this model had been produced.

China’s number three mobile crane producer is Beijing Crane Works (BCW). It produces about 1,500 mobile cranes a year, which it says gives it a domestic market share in the region of 16% to 20%. It is a subsidiary of JingCheng Construction and exports to other Asian countries and Africa.

BCW describes itself as the birthplace of the mobile crane in China, having been established in 1950. As early as 1958 it was mass producing a 5t capacity mechanical truck crane and it developed an 8t hydraulic truck crane in 1968. A full range of hydraulic truck cranes from 8t to 20t was in place by 1980.

In 1983 it formed technology-transfer agreements with Grove of the USA to produce a 25t RT and with Tadano of Japan for 35t and 50t hydraulic truck cranes. It also produces IHI lattice boom RTs from 16t to 40t, a series of recovery cranes and aerial work platforms.

Its latest generation QY16E 16t hydraulic truck crane was put into mass production in 1999.

BCW says that a testament to the quality of its machines is that a QY20B 20t truck crane has been at work ‘perfectly’ for 14 years in sub-zero temperatures and bad weather at the South Pole Great Wall Station and ZhongShan Station.

The company seems placed now to make its very own great leap forward thanks to a new joint venture with Tadano. On 28 March 2003 BQ Tadano was officially registered, 25% owned by Tadano, 75% by JingCheng Construction. Manufacture of all hydraulic truck cranes will be transferred from BCW to BQ Tadano in a new factory that has just been built near Beijing airport. Production is scheduled to begin this month or next.

Taian Hoisting Machinery Works is another high-volume crane manufacturer. Like Xuzhou, it also had a co-operation agreement with Liebherr in the mid 1990s but its cranes have taken more from Japanese technology than German. The largest model in its range is the 50t capacity QY50A truck crane, which has a 40.7m main boom and 55.6m boom and jib combination. With main boom fully extended it can lift 7.5t at 9m radius and 3.6t at 18m.

Taian, however, concentrates mostly on small sized cranes, and while Xuzhou is the most expensive of the Chinese mobile cranes, Taian is the low-price option.

Other truck crane manufacturers showing their machines at the BICES show last October were Jinzhou Heavy Machinery and Bengbu Zheng Chong Anli Engineering Machinery (Anli), both of which produces models up to 25t capacity. Anli’s publicity material declares that ‘customers are the god of the factory’, which has to be one of the better slogans in the crane industry.

The only imported mobile crane on show at BICES last year was Liebherr’s 250t all terrain LTM 1250/1. Liebherr claims to have 75% of the mobile cranes that come in from Europe. In 2002 it sold seven all terrains and two crawlers. In 2003 there was a significant increase to 19 ATs, ranging from 80t to 500t capacity, and five crawlers. Liebherr is building an excavator factory in Dalian to produce five models, starting in April, but it has no plans to build cranes in China. Demag and Grove also have representative offices in Beijing, although Demag’s success to date has come mainly from crawler cranes. Sennebogen has also had some success in China since signing up Beijing Sunny Machinery (BSM) as its dealer in 2000. BSM has sold 14 Sennebogen HMC 633 harbour mobiles, two 830R Greenline scrap handling machines and, in 2003, two 5500 crawler cranes to steel plants in Benxi and Baoshan to be used for the erection of steel mills.

BSM is also branching out as a used equipment dealer, bringing in crawlers from the Dutch dealers. The entrepreneurial management of BSM last year also facilitated the repair of a damaged 1997 model Demag CC 1400 by Dutch repair specialist Avezaat.

Truck loaders
Official figures put the truck loader crane market at 3,000 units a year though it is unclear how many of these one might otherwise class as small truck cranes. The market for ‘true’ loader cranes appears to be a developing one, with a lot of overseas companies looking to get in. In the south, due probably to the Hong Kong influence, European-style knuckle booms are preferred. In the north, it is Japanese-style straight booms.

At the BICES exhibition last October were loader cranes from at least six overseas manufacturers. Other manufacturers, such as Hiab, were not visible at the show but have been active in China for a few years.

Of the Europeans, an Effer crane was shown by Shi Jiazhuang, a manufacturer of machinery for the coal mining industry that also has its own lines of both folding and straight boom loaders. Palfinger, which set up a representative office in Beijing in February 2003, had a crane on the stand of Chang Lin, an equipment manufacturer based in Jiangsu province, and one of four dealers that Palfinger has signed up. It helps to have a manufacturer of hydraulic machinery as a dealer, Palfinger chief representative officer Andreas Griebel explains, because they have the necessary permits to fit loader cranes to trucks. Another Palfinger dealer, Qing Hua, the first to be signed up back in 1999, also makes its own line of loader cranes. Griebel reckons that there are about 100 Palfinger cranes in China, most of which are second-hand and imported – either legitmately or smuggled – from Hong Kong.

From Korea, Kanglim and Soosan both exhibited at BICES. They produce straight boom loaders predominantly, but also have one or two knuckle models. Soosan produces 1,500 units a year in Korea, where it claims a 70% market share. Its presence at the show was the beginning of its push into China as it was still waiting for the necessary government permits. Its line of hydraulic breakers are already sold widely in China, however.

Kanglim manufactures in China in joint venture with Jinzhou Heavy Machinery. Kanglim Special Vehicles (Jinzhou) is based in Liaoning.

The youngest loader crane manufacturing enterprise in China is Taian Furukawa Machinery in Shandong. This joint venture between Furukawa Unic of Japan and Taian Hoisting Machinery Works was established in September 2003.

Taiwan Access, whose product line includes the GW telescopic boom crane series, is also marketing its products in mainland China.

Tower cranes
While no tower cranes were exhibited at BICES, given the huge numbers of then all around Beijing, there were probably none that could be spared to be idle for the week! XCMG, however, was promoting its 125tm class QTZ125.

The only tower crane manufacturer from overseas with any presence in China is Potain and it seems to have quite an influence on the domestic manufacturers. The distinctive shape of its Vision cab, the new rounded style introduced in Europe in 2000, is already being imitated. It was introduced in China at the Shanghai Bauma trade fair in November 2002 on its MC 230 model. Within 10 months a similar-looking cab could be seen on sites in Beijing on cranes made by local manufacturer Schenyang.

Potain is no longer really a foreign company in China because its product is becoming more and more Chinese. It has a factory in Zhangjiagang, near Shanghai, that was initially a joint venture with Ling Hong but has been wholly owned since January 2000. Zhangjiagang (or ZJG) Potain produces cranes from 40tm up to the 485tm model that was launched at Intermat 2003 as the MD 485 and is being made in China as the MC 485. In 2000, 50% of the value of the cranes produced in Zhangjiagang was imported from Europe. Today, depending on the model, up to 90% of the value is made in China. Only winches and some electrical parts are imported, and even the winches are about to become Chinese on at least one model. Within the next couple of months the MC 110 will have a three-speed Chinese winch that has been put through months of testing and thousands of cycles to ensure reliability. The MC 110 will then be 100% Chinese, says Eric Etchart, president of parent company Manitowoc Crane Group’s Asian operations. Ensuring quality is a major issue for Potain, since it is the only way it can compete, given that its cranes carry a price premium on average of 30% in China. Quality and service, that is. The same manufacturing quality procedures are applied in ZJG as they are in other Potain factories around the world, with six-monthly internal quality audits and yearly qualification of suppliers and subcontractors. There is an in-house welding school and welders are put through certification every six months and graded either A (the best), B or C depending on competence. By October 2003, of the 64 welders, 10 were grade A and 15 were grade B, and the rest C. The target, Etchart says, is to get them all to grade A, even though in Europe only 20% are at this level. Already, according one Potain quality manager, the welding at ZJG is better than in France, though not as good as Potain’s benchmark factory in Portugal.

There are dozens of Chinese tower crane manufacturers, but among the most prominent, as well as XCMG, is Sichuan Construction Machinery (SCM). Like several other companies, its technology is based on Potain’s, and it offers cranes from 25tm all the way up to 900tm, with both trolley jib and luffing jib cranes. SCM has international distribution in Malaysia, Turkey and the Philippines, as well as in Hong Kong and all around China.

Ship, harbour and EOT cranes
It is not just Potain that has seen the benefits of manufacturing cranes in China. KCI Konecranes of Finland has a hoist manufacturing factory in Shanghai and a 25% share in an overhead crane building joint venture.

Swedish ship crane manufacturer MacGregor Crane also produces cranes in China – or rather, it has them produced for it.MacGregor sold more than 100 cranes in 2003 for installation on new vessels at Chinese shipyards. All these cranes were made in China by Luzhou Machine Works, with whom MacGregor has a co-operation agreement.

But the undisputed king when it comes to cranes in China is Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co Ltd (ZPMC). ZPMC made more than 90 ship-to-shore container cranes in 2003, giving it a world market share in the region of 40%, and it expects to make about 125 in 2004, having completed construction of what it claims is the world’s largest port machinery manufacturing centre on Changxing Island. Nearly as large, but with a lower international profile because its customer base is mostly in China, is Shanghai Port Machinery Co Ltd (SPMP) which makes about 100 container cranes and ship unloaders a year and 20 EOT cranes. Since 1960 SPMP has built 2,500 cranes.