07.04.2021

Tadano sets out strategies

Following the exit of its European companies from administration, Tadano has announced the next steps in its plans, with the long term aim to become the world's leading mobile crane manufacturer. The announcement come shortly after Koichi Tadano handed over the chief executive’s role to Toshiaki Ujiie, to become group chairman - see: New CEO for Tadano.

One significant change will be the reintroduction of Japanese built Rough Terrain cranes to the European market. What has not yet been specified is whether these will be the North American or Japanese market specification models but it will most likely include models from each range. One product type that will be welcomed are city type Rough Terrain/All Terrain models. Tadano also plans to step up the geographic coverage for its European built All Terrain and lattice boom cranes.

The company will merge all of its distribution and commercial subsidiaries in the Americas into a new ‘Pan-American Operations’ division, with all sales, marketing, service, and parts activities for North, Central and South America, including the Caribbean, reporting into Huston based Tadano America Corporation. The telescopic crawler crane manufacturer Tadano Mantis will remain as an engineering and manufacturing business, while some models, including the new 156 tonne GTC-1800EX will be made in Europe.

Nomenclature 'harmonisation'

Another significant change will be the harmonisation of the Tadano and Demag brands later this year, with the Faun and Demag names likely to be dropped completely. The Demag model designations AC for All Terrains and CC for lattice crawler cranes will be adopted for all relevant Tadano cranes, along with a new model nomenclature system, which uses the number of axles, a full stop, the maximum capacity in tonnes followed by a hyphen and the version number.

All Terrain cranes will be AC - so the Demag AC 450-7 becomes the Tadano AC 7.450-1, while the Tadano ATF 100 4.1 Becomes the Tadano AC 4.100-1. Lattice boom crawler cranes will be CC plus a legacy series number, the maximum capacity and version number. So, the CC 3800 becomes the CC 38.650-1.

The announcement said: “Unifying all models under the Tadano brand affords the company an opportunity to better leverage synergies, maximise economies of scale and ultimately offer customers a more competitive full line of lifting equipment."

Toshiaki Ujiie added: “We continue to transform the Tadano group to more efficiently bring together the best equipment, technologies and support structure, so we are more competitive and can better contribute to our customers’ success. Our current strategic initiatives allow us to improve innovation and significantly increase the number of new crane models introduced to the market over the next four years. In line with our core values of safety, quality and efficiency based on compliance these moves will bring us closer to achieving our vision of becoming number one worldwide in the lifting equipment industry.”

Vertikal Comment

There is a lot of detail left to come with this, as well as timing etc... but none of it is unexpected and it all makes good sense. The challenge will be keeping everyone on board as it comes together. Changing the Demag name for Tadano will be a good deal easier and likely to prove a great deal less detrimental in the eyes of Zweibrücken employees than the switch from Demag to Terex was.

Taking more product lines global makes total sense of the company is serious about displacing Liebherr as the worldwide market leader. And there are a good many other advantages in being less compartmentalised.