China’s biggest manufacturer of construction machinery saw its sales grow 81%, year-on-year, in the first 10 months of 2003 Xuzhou Engineering Machinery Group, the parent company of the country’s leading mobile crane manufacturer XCMG, reported sales of 12.9 billion yuan (US$1.57 billion) for the 10 months to 31 October 2003. It has become the first machinery company in China to pass 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) in annual sales.
The company has 26 subsidiaries and joint ventures, producing 418 different types of machine, including mobile cranes and tower cranes.
The group has set a target of 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion) in sales for 2004.
Founded in 1989 in Xuzhou City in Jiangsu Province in the east of China, XCMG’s early growth was aided by co-operation agreements with overseas companies that included Caterpillar, Krupp and Liebherr. It is the world’s largest volume manufacturer of mobile cranes, producing about 4,000 units in 2003, giving it a 50% market share in China.
At the BICES construction machinery exhibition in Beijing in October, XCMG showed its newest model, the QY65K, a 65t capacity hydraulic truck crane with a five-section 58m boom. Its largest standard model is the 80t rated QY80, whose main boom extends to 44m. With a two-section jib (9.5m-16m) it has a maximum lifting height of 60m. Alongside a wide range of truck cranes, Xuzhou also offers a 25t rough terrain (or tyre crane, in Chinese jargon), the QLY25. It also has 35t and 50t lattice boom crawler cranes in its product line-up.
In 1996, XCMG produced China’s biggest ever truck crane, the 160t rated, telescopic boom QUY160T. Just one unit was produced. And in mid 2003 it sold a 125t machine to a customer in Shandong province. Generally, however, like all Chinese manufacturers, it concentrates on machines up to about 60t capacity.