Sumitomo Heavy Industries has provided a few more details of its crawler crane joint venture with Hitachi.
Masahiro Masakawa of SHI supplied answers to the following questions.
Q. Will both companies continue to manufacture cranes?
A. The joint venture will develop new product and delegate, or outsource, production to both Sumitomo and Hitachi based on the following ‘product split’ arrangement: – all models for the Americas (Link-Belt) and all large size models aimed at the world market will be produced by Sumitomo. All smaller models, except those destined for the Americas, will be produced by Hitachi. In order to have efficient manufacturing for the new joint venture, Sumitomo and Hitachi will collaborate in various areas such as joint purchasing and component cross-supply.
Q. What decisions have been taken about distribution?
A. In North, Central and South America, Link-Belt Construction Equipment will continue to distribute crawler cranes made by Sumitomo under LBCE brand as currently done. In other international market Hitachi and Sumitomo are working with the objective of distributing crawler cranes under the new brand by leveraging the strengths of the respective networks of both parties.
Q. When will we know the new name of the joint venture?
A. End of June 2002.
Q. When will we see the first crane of the new joint venture?
A. The first shipment after 1 October 2002 is expected to be first crane of the joint venture.
Q. What can be disclosed about the cranes that are being designed by the new venture? For example, what capacity/class is being worked on first?
A. We cannot disclose anything at the moment.
Q. The joint venture will have only 100 employees. Is this really enough to achieve world market domination?
A. These 100 employees does not include manufacturing personnel. Manufacturing is delegated to Sumitomo and Hitachi. It is consisted of R&D, sales & marketing, and general administration.
