04.01.2007

Manitowoc buys Shuttlelift

The Manitowoc Crane Group has purchased the Shuttlelift Carrydeck rage of pick and carry industrial cranes from Marine Travelift, Inc. Terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.

Manitowoc has been selling certain Shuttlelift models under the Grove ‘YardBoss’ brand, in a supply agreement made some two years ago. At the same time Shuttlelift has continued to market its cranes under its own name though its own dealer network.

Marine Travelift will continue manufacturing the Carrydeck and YardBoss cranes through the end of 2007 with Manitowoc taking over the production in 2008. When the cranes will most likely be built at Grove’s Shady Grove facility.

Manitowoc plans to continue selling Shuttlelift branded Carrydeck cranes through the existing dealer network.

“This agreement will benefit the customers of both Shuttlelift’s Carrydeck products and Grove’s YardBoss industrial cranes as the two leaders in this market come together,” said John Wheeler, executive vice president for Manitowoc Crane Group Americas. “Carrydeck customers will benefit from Grove’s 60 years of mobile crane innovation and Manitowoc Crane Group will benefit from Shuttlelift’s expertise in the industrial crane market.”

Marine Travelift says that it is selling the Carrydeck line in order to focus on its rubber-tired gantry crane business, and mobile boat hoist product lines which, it says have more potential than pick and carry cranes..

“We realized that our Gantry business could be much larger in both the industrial markets and marine markets than the Carrydeck business ever could be, so we made a shift to dedicate our internal resources to grow the business we felt would take us further,” says Stephan Pfeifer, CEO of Shuttlelift and Marine Travelift.

Vertikal Comment

This deal certainly makes sense for Marine Travelift, industrial cranes hardly fit with the other products that it makes. Manitowoc might have been quite happy to have left the deal as it was?

However it will benefit from access to a number of new dealers providing it with a more outlets in what is a very fragmented market.

See Manitowoc sign supply agreement June 2004