Finnish crane builder KCI Konecranes said on 5 January that it had agreed the acquisition of the after-market operation of French harbour crane maker Caillard from Rolls-Royce Power Engineering of the UK for an undisclosed sum.
The purchase is in line with KCI Konecranes’s strategy of enhancing its activities within maintenance services for material handling equipment in ports worldwide.
Caillard, based in Le Havre and building cranes since 1859, will under its new ownership concentrate on after-sales activities, including spares, modernisations, upgrades and maintenance for its world-wide installed base of more than 1,000 cranes. Caillard will not build new cranes. Following KCI Konecranes strategy, Caillards services will also expand into covering other crane makes as well.
The company employs about 20 people in Le Havre but according to Mikko Uhari, president of Konecranes VLC Oy, KCI Konecranes’ harbour crane operations: “The long term employment within field services will be a multiple of this number.”
Other recent moves by KCI Konecranes include the acquisition of the crane maintenance business of Noell Service und Maschinentechnik GmbH of Langenhagen and Hamburg, Germany in March 2000. Under its new name, Noell Konecranes, this company is now positioned for spare parts, modernisations, upgrades and maintenance.
Noell Konecranes has recently won several major maintenance contracts including a two-year maintenance contract for 50 straddle carriers in Hamburger Hafen und Lagerhaus AG (HHLA), a modernisation project for a shipyard in Dakar, Senegal and a translocation job for EADS Airbus in Hamburg, where a storage hall with heavy load trailers will be moved to a new location.
KCI Konecranes intends to align its two new subsidiaries, Noell Konecranes and Caillard with its existing port service operations, especially those in Asia (headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), the Baltic Basin (managed from Hyvinkää, Finland) and the North American East Coast (managed from Houston, Texas).
The Group’s other maintenance services activities which focus on industrial cranes, with its presence at close to 300 locations world-wide and a 2500 strong crew, will also provide a backbone for the port service operations, in marketing, management and as a resources pool, the company said.
KCI Konecranes port services is organised as part of the Group’s Harbour and Shipyard Crane organisation, and it will be reported under Maintenance Services in Group reports. For the current year total sales for Port Services is estimated to exceed Euro 60m.
