27.04.2001

On the prowl

There has been a big change at Terex. Its lifting industry operations have now been lumped together with other Terex operations in two geographical divisions.
In the US Ernie Verebelyi, until now president of Terex Earthmoving, has been named group president of Terex Mining and Americas. In Europe Colin Robertson, until now managing director for the construction ad Powerscreen group, has been named president, Europe.
Fil Filipov, who previously ran the worldwide lifting activities, becomes executive vice president with responsibility for “restructuring and investment activities for the company in order to accelerate growth and improve earnings”.

Ron DeFeo, Terex’s chairman, says the change from a product focused organisation to a geographical one is necessary as : “The relationships we develop must .. be local between the equipment users, the distribution channels and the manufacturer”.

Hs words are echoed by Filipov who stresses that Terex Lifting has never been involved in large scale movements of equipment across the Atlantic, largely because: “I don’t believe you can build a world crane”.

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Fil Filipov

Instead he identifies three primary crane markets in the world: the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. There are opportunities to move technology from one area to the other, but it then has to be adapted. The Peiner and Comedil tower cranes are an example of this as Terex is just about to complete the first US-built Peiner tower cranes at the American Cranes factory in Wilmington, North Carolina. More than $1 million has been invested in paint shops and other facilities to make this possible.

Closed markets

“You cannot penetrate any of the three main markets from a distance,” says Filipov adding that the US is “the most openly closed market in the world”.

So what will Filipov do now? His answer may alarm some readers: “Well we need to develop crawler cranes for Europe, we want to get into knuckle booms in Europe and North America, we have to develop the Compact Crane project, we need larger ATs, Spain is important, self-erectors are interesting - we should buy something, new telescopic boom crawlers are on the way, we want to be active in Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Russia, Korea and Japan, Germany is an area we havn’t got right yet…It doesn’t look as if I will be slowing down!”

He adds that his job is to “find, buy, fix, and then integrate or sell” adding that in his view Terex’s ability to integrate businesses from around the world is one of its great strengths. Asked whether he has a specific budget for his shopping list of projects he replies simply that “funding has never been a problem”.