28.06.2002

Demag's 100 days

What will Fil Filipov do to Demag? Well, a better question might be: “What is Demag doing to Fil Filipov?”

Why? Because Filipov seems to be a changed man: “I don’t envisage a slash and burn 100 day programme at Demag” was one of his first comments in a wide ranging interview with Tim Whiteman for our sister magazine "Cranes & Access". Others included the observation that “I don’t expect senior management changes at Demag” and “Demag is a hi-tech, customer oriented company with a savvy management that is focussed on customer support”.

In Germany some parts of the strategy are clear. Demag’s sales team will very soon get some significant additions to its portfolio. This will include PPM’s 2-axle cranes, eg the 35 tonne ATT400, and Bendini’s rough terrains (this seems to signal the end of PPM’s own business in Germany). Also coming is a range of smaller crawler cranes in the 60 tonne to 250 tonne range where Demag is not currently active. The cranes are made by IHI in Japan and will be fully CE marked. Terex already sells IHI crawler cranes in the US under the Terex-American name.

Whether this wll be applied to other countries is not yet clear and Filipov says that he "needs time to digest" the full implications of the Demag takeover.

* The full text of the interview is published in "Cranes & Access" next week but is also available now in the On-line version (click on "The Dawn of the Superpowers" to download the PDF file). Alternatively you can save the file and read it off-line. If you are using a PC, you should right-click on this Link, Choose "Save Target As", then open the Adobe Acrobat file outside your browser).