It has also opened a central sales office in Waverley, Iowa to provide a single point of contact for all its brands. “In the past, there has been confusion about the Terex Cranes brands. Who do you buy from?,” said Doug Freesan, vice president and general manager of Terex Cranes North America. He is planning a single national Terex Cranes sales telephone number in a few months.

“Anything sold in North America will be serviced in North America and handled through North America,” Freesan said. “Trained service technicians in the field are basically able to work with the distribution network to solve problems. Everything is going through them – Comedil, Demag, whatever.”

The largest market for Peiner tower cranes is in North America, Freesan said, so it was a natural fit to make them at Terex’s Wilmington, North Carolina factory, where workers also make boom inserts for Terex American-branded crawler cranes manufactured by IHI in Japan. The Wilmington factory began to ship Peiner tower cranes this summer, Freesan said, and the company expects to produce about 120 complete cranes in 2007 in this start-up phase.


Comedil tower cranes

The North American operations are also planning to ramp up the import of Comedil tower cranes, which previously it has not sold. “There is huge demand in North America,” Freesan said. “The Comedil tower is a more premier brand than Peiner. It depends on what the customer wants.” Freesan said that in 2007 Terex Cranes will import Comedil top-slewers and self-erectors.

“We are trying to introduce Comedil into the marketplace in small numbers to see how it will sell. We do not have huge expectations in 2007, after which we will look to see whether to ramp up hard or keep it steady,” Freesan said.

The company is not planning to bring every Terex Cranes brand into North America, Freesan said. Although Terex Cranes has sold many Bendini cranes this year, the company is not planning to import many of the Italian rough-terrain cranes. “What’s happened is that demand is so high, if someone needs an RT immediately, we have had an opportunity to get them sooner [than Terex-Waverly could]. That is the only reason to sell Bendini in North America,” Freesan said. He added that Terex Crane’s Australian-made Franna yard cranes are also unlikely to take off in North America.

Mobile crane producer Terex-Demag will continue to manufacture Peiner tower cranes at its factory in Zweibruecken, Germany, according to Freesan.

But Terex Cranes is also planning to rationalise production of Peiner cranes and those of Italian manufacturer Terex-Comedil, according to new Comedil sales manager Simone Moritsch. “Now we are really going to integrate Peiner with Terex Cranes.”

– Comedil is in the midst of one of its biggest transitions ever. “Next year is the most important year for us because after the big growth that we have had this year, we really want to improve all our service to customers,” said Simone Moritsch.


Left: Simone Moritsch, Comedil’s sales manager, with older brother and predecessor Mariano

He has taken the job left vacant by the departure of older brother Mariano in July. Their older sister Martina Moritsch remains managing director. (All are the children of the company’s founder, Feruccio Moritsch).

The company has appointed two new engineers following the departure of chief engineer Pierluigi Tommasi earlier this year. His replacements are Giuliano Giacomelli, project and new crane engineering, and Francesco Valente, application engineering. It has made its parts operation a separate branch of the business and appointed a new manager, Monica Fontana. The company plans to divide its customer service into zones: the Americas, Europe and Asia.

All of this has happened during a period of great growth – Simone Moritsch expects a turnover of Euro 170m, an increase of 50% over 2005, and says he expects a turnover of Euro 200m in 2007.