Hitachi crawler cranes are set to become more prominent on the construction sites of Britain with the decision by HM Plant to start promoting cranes once again.
HM Plant is Hitachi Construction Machinery’s distributor for the UK and Ireland and one of the UK’s leading suppliers of construction and agricultural machinery. It sold 13 Hitachi cranes in 1989 and 1990 but then found the product was too expensive for UK tastes.
With the UK market now picking up, and Japanese machinery more readily available at lower prices, HM has decided to enter the crane market once again.
It is offering six models from the CK range, from the 55t CX 550 up to the 200t CX 2000, with 70t, 90t, 100t and 180t models in between. Newest of these is the 90t-capacity CX 900, with a rope speed of 105m/min, which came to the market in Japan last October to replace the 80t-capacity KH 300-3. Hitachi is aiming for worldwide sales of 20 units of the CX 900 each year.
The first crane received by HM Plant is a CX 550, shipped in January from the Netherlands home of Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe). HM reports that it has since had strong interest from prospective customers.
HM’s decision to move back into cranes may also have been prompted in part by Birse Plant Hire buying eight CX 550s direct from Bangkok last year. HCM (Europe) estimates that between 30 and 50 Hitachi cranes were imported through unauthorised channels last year.
