26.04.2017

New crawler mounted boom

Dutch company Catamount will launch a new 26ft telescopic crawler boom at Apex in Amsterdam next week.

The company - owned by Caspar van Woerden of Van Woerden Trading International and GC Trading - is based in Wekerom, between Apeldoorn and Arnhem. Van Woerden also has an interest in Fastener Point International which supplies cladding and roofing fasteners. The trading companies offer a range of services including buying and selling new and used telehandlers and aerial lifts on an import/export basis.
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Caspar van Woerden

Van Woerden now believes that there is demand for a line of crawler mounted booms following the virtual departure of Aichi from the wider European market and more importantly the discontinuation of the Hitachi crawler boom lift line a couple of years or so ago.
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The new Catamount 25.10 telescopic crawler mounted boom lift

So turning his hand to manufacturing van Woerden has produced his first model, the 26ft Catamount 25.10. The crawler boom has a working height of just over 10 metres, weighs just 2.55 tonnes and has an overall width of just under 1.6 metres. Outreach is limited to 5.1 metres with 80kg or 4.6 metres with the maximum platform capacity of 150kg/one person plus tools. The new lift uses a three section octagonal boom and is mounted on low profile rubber tracks with a non-marking option, and Yanmar power.

The new boom lift sits between the old 21ft Hitachi HX64B-2 and the 32ft HX99B-2 crawler mounted booms which went out of production a few years ago. As such it could hit a ‘sweet spot’ as a substitute for both machines. Catamount has plans to extend the range, possibly to include the more mainstream 40 and 60ft models.
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The design layout for the new machine

Update
By late 2021 Catamount had morphed into a new company Hyrax based at the same facility with the same principles.

Vertikal Comment

This is an interesting move on the part of Van Woerden and has probably been encouraged by those rental companies and/or dealers who were regular - albeit low volume - purchasers of the Hitachi machines which sold slowly but steadily over a number of years, but almost exclusively in the Netherlands. The problem is that they are a bit too niche for most rental companies and were fairly pricey. They were however beautifully made and ultra reliable.

This type of machine does have its followers, that is for sure, and being very light and relatively compact for a self-propelled boom it offers low ground bearing pressures and will suit some applications. It is hard to see that it offers the vast majority of end users anything more than a more versatile wheeled boom or a small spider lift, and the limited outreach and platform capacity coudl be an issue, as such is likely to remain a niche machine, which may perfectly suit a new manufacturer?

This will be an interesting one to watch.