RISING PRESSURE

UK construction equipment manufacturers are stepping up their lobbying efforts to persuade government authorities to police the import of so-called grey machines at point of entry, as happens in the USA, rather than on site.

Europe in general, and the UK in particular, has seen an influx of new and nearly new crawler cranes and excavators shipped over from Southeast Asia where there is an excess of cranes for the depressed market.

The extent of the problem of grey imports is highlighted by the decline in crawler sales in Japan and Asia. Sales in Japan fell from about 740 units in 1997 to 430 in 1998. In Singapore they fell from 186 to 14. In Korea they fell from 81 to 8. Across the whole of Southeast Asia, sales of crawler cranes fell from more than 1,100 units to below 570.

Official figures show that 15 crawler cranes of capacities over 15t were delivered in the UK last year, including six by R-B, seven by IHI’s European distributor AGD Equipment and one by Manitowoc, a 888 to Weldex. That, in itself, represents quite a good year for the UK crawler market.

But add to that the number of nearly new crawlers shipped over to the UK and it is evident that 1998 represents something of a boom year for the UK, possibly a turning point as UK users finally join the modern world and replace their old mechanical machines with hydraulic ones.

However, those nearly new and used cranes shipped over from Asia generally did not conform to European Union regulations and had to be brought up to standard after they had arrived. Typical measures needed to make the cranes conform include fitting rotation-resistant ropes and changing Japanese safe load indicators to European ones. However, the manufacturer’s technical file must also be available, and this, it is widely believed, has not always been the case.

Among those buying grey machines were Birse Plant Hire, which bought eight used Hitachi machines direct from Thailand last year and engaged Hitachi’s UK distributor HM Plant and an independent testing house to secure CE conformity.

AGD sold 13 used IHI crawlers in 1998, which arrived as illegal machines and were brought up to grade in AGD’s own yard in Birmingham.

Pressed on the issue of grey imports and CE conformity by excavator manufacturers, the UK Health & Safety Executive checked several excavators on site last year and was satisfied that as none were deemed unsafe no action needed to be taken. Manufacturers are now seeking to press customs officials to use their powers to stop machines entering the UK if they are not properly CE marked, as is mandatory under European law.

AGD’s sales director Robert Law is, inevitably, against the idea of stopping non-CE marked machines entering the country. Such a move, he says, would be overly draconian. The issues are different in the USA, he says, as machines are turned away from US ports for not meeting engine emissions standards. A crane failing to meet US engine emission standards cannot easily be fixed, whereas getting a crane CE marked is a much easier process than changing a whole engine, and one that – as an authorised distributor, with the manufacturer’s technical file – AGD is able to manage, Law says.

R-B International believes that if CE marking was policed more vigorously in the UK it would have doubled, or more, its domestic sales last year. But, either way, there is a positive spin-off for R-B. UK contractors are apparently starting to buy crawler cranes again, and in so doing, they are finally embracing hydraulic crawlers instead of their old mechanical dinosaurs.

They may have been prompted to renew or extend their fleets by the fact that Japanese over-supply has led to some great deals. But the end result is that the UK is finally dragging itself out of the mechanical age.

First out of the blocks is AGD itself, which as well as selling IHIs also runs a rental fleet of 75 crawlers, including 30 minis. It had been wanting to expand its rental fleet for several years but only last year, with the downturn in Japan, did the right machines become available at the right prices. “This past year has been like a birthday for us,” says Law. “We have been able to buy what we want at sensible prices. We have to get them up to scratch [ie recondition or repair them] but that’s no problem as we have got the facilities.” Over the past two years AGD has completely switched from mechanical to hydraulic cranes.

Among those buying this year is the UK’s largest crane rental company, Initial GWS, which plans to refurbish and extend its crawler fleet. It is talking to manufacturers already and is in the market for cranes in the range 60t to 200t. GWS, at last, is going hydraulic.