15.01.2004

New company for Kobelco Cranes

Kobelco has announced the setting up of a specialised European Crane sales and service company, Kobelco Cranes Europe Ltd, based in based in East Grinstead in the UK.

The new business is a wholly-owned subsidiary company of Kobelco Construction Machinery Co. Ltd. and is dedicated to selling, marketing and providing after sales product support for Kobelco cranes directly to end-users throughout Europe.

While only announced this week, the change over to the new company was effective as of the first of December 2003.

Until now, crane operations in Europe have been divisions within Kobelco Construction Machinery (Europe) b.v. based in Almere, The Netherlands and in Ipswich for the UK.

With the exception of the new location for the UK, the changes are limited to the corporate structure. The same team of people will continue to support the distribution efforts as before.

Comment:

This announcement from Kobelco follows on the heals of the deal with the Manitowoc Group to supply Kobelco crawler cranes of under 136 tonnes to Manitowoc on an OEM basis for sale via the Manitowoc North American distribution network (See Vertikal.Net Nov/17th/ 03).

This “separation” of the crane business from the construction equipment division would seem to be one more step along the way towards an eventual disposal of one or the other of the businesses.

Industry pundits are bound to see this as a further indication of a possible acquisition of Kobelco cranes by Manitowoc.