AUSTRIA’S Palfinger, manufacturer of truck loader cranes, is considering organising production in Russia, the Russian PrimeTASS news agency reported on 17 July, quoting company president Hubert Palfinger.
According to Palfinger, the company aims to control 25% to 30% of the Russian market of crane manipulators by 2007. Palfinger said Russia is the most interesting market for the company, because it has a huge number of potential buyers of modern equipment, specifically in the oil and gas sector and in road and house building.
St. Petersburg-based Soyuzavto STS, a construction machinery distributor, is to be Palfinger’s partner for its new project in Russia, the company’s spokeswoman Tatyana Atanasova told Cranes Today. The company is already mounting Palfinger cranes on Russian-made chassis and selling Palfinger products in Russia. Last month Hubert Palfinger visited St Petersburg by invitation from Soyuzavto STS, Atanasova said.
Palfinger cranes arrived on the Russian market in 1996. Local sales peaked in 2001 after its products received Russian certification. In 2001 the company supplied 53 cranes, worth E1m, to Russia, according to PrimeTASS.
Meanwhile, Gennady Razvalov, director of the truck loader crane plant in Balashikha (BAKM), the leading Russian producer of loader cranes, said his company had made repeated attempts to establish a partnership with Palfinger since the mid-1990s, to no avail. Palfinger’s proposal to buy the Russian plant was rejected by BAKM managers.
A spokesman for Palfinger in Austria said: ‘It is right that we are considering production in Russia, but it is nothing that we will realise in the next five years.’
