18.06.2018

Potain split confirmed

Manitowoc has confirmed that it is splitting its European regional Potain tower crane business into two operations, Self-erecting and Top slewing.

The move which was first mooted at Intermat, covers manufacturing and product management, with Christophe Simoncelli, leading the Top slewing tower crane business and its two European factories in Moulins, France and Oporto, Portugal, while Giorgio Angelino, will manage the Self-erecting tower crane business and its plants in Charlieu, France and Niella Tanaro, Italy.
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Christophe Simoncelli

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Giorgio Angelino

The regional sales and Crane Care teams remain unchanged, although they now combine under vice president sales, Orlando Mota. They include service, replacement parts, logistics, used cranes and EnCore rebuilds. He will also handle all tower crane marketing activities.
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Orlando Mota

All tower crane engineering duties will continue to be centralised under Bruno Roni-Damond, while all finance and administration, including, Human Resources will be managed by Jean-Noel Gros,

All of the above will report to Aaron Ravenscroft, who was appointed senior vice president for mobile cranes in 216, when Manitowoc split its tower and mobile crane businesses, and then took up his current role as executive vice president of cranes when Larry Weyers left the company last year. See Manitowoc splits towers and mobiles
See Weyers leaves Manitowoc

The company says that the new structure has “the sole objective of better serving its tower customers and dealers through customer focus, market intelligence, operations efficiency and high quality crane production, on time and on price.”

Mota added: “Self-erecting (GMA) and Top Slewing cranes (GME) are two different products that serve different types of applications. They require different market approaches and ultimately follow two different roadmaps. In addition to giving independent visions to GME and GMA, we have recognised the need to create operations strategies that individually cater to GMA and GME. Allowing our factories to focus on a specific product will make them more effective, particularly regarding production capacity and delivery times.”

Vertikal Comment

The logic of separating self-erecting and top slewing cranes into two operations makes good sense and helps step up the focus on each. However, it is surprising that the engineering has not been separated as well. This might be more down to practicalities than strategy. To a lesser extent you could argue the same when it comes to after sales service in that the demands are quite different for the two types of crane.

It is entirely possible that if the separation goes as well as is likely, we will see specialist engineering and service teams being formed.
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Potain is a leading manufacturer of both self-erecting and top slewing tower cranes