11.04.2025

Manitowoc accuses Kobelco of dumping

Manitowoc Cranes, which also owns the Potain, Grove and National Crane brands, has filed and an anti-dumping petition with the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Commerce alleging that Japanese manufacturer Kobelco has been selling lattice crawler cranes at predatory ‘dumping level’ prices. It also names Sumitomo and its affiliate Link-Belt in the claim.

Chief executive Aaron Ravenscroft said: "Our action today clearly indicates that Kobelco’s behaviours have harmed our U.S. lattice boom crawler crane operations. We trust that the U.S. Government will swiftly take action to level the playing field in support of our hardworking U.S. employees.”

The announcement was made late last night during Bauma week, with no mention of it in discussions with senior executives earlier in the day.

Vertikal Comment

This came as a bit of a surprise, given all the focus on Chinese manufacturers, the fact that Japanese cranes normally command a premium, and that Kobleco supplied the company with Manitowoc branded crawler cranes between 2003 and 2018. We have not yet seen the official filing, but believe that it may be related to a number of specific deals involving one or two higher capacity models in the regular crawler crane newsmarket. Possibly in the 450 to 650 tonnes range.

But that is only based on a number of comments received, rather than hard evidence or inside knowledge.

The last time Manitowoc filed an ‘dumping claim’, it related to Japanese and German All Terrains and had little to no merit, made no sense, and was withdrawn by the company following a change in chief executive. This time it is different in that the people at the top take a more serious view of making such claims and are unlikely to have taken such an action, unless there was some fairly solid evidence to justify a formal complaint.

We hope to obtain a copy of the actual filing next week and will update this new item then.

UPDATE
We have now obtained a copy of the claim which is extensive and we will be wading through it next week, one - it also names Sumitomo which supplies components/fabrications to Link-Belt.