A mobile crane overturned yesterday at a job site in the Jurong area of Singapore near the port and main industrial area of the city.
The incident caused work on the site – where contractor Yong Xing Construction is building a new electrical substation – to be suspended while the Ministry Of Manpower (MOM) carried out an investigation.
The crane, rented from Beng Huat Crane, was apparently booming out at the time it overturned, we do not know if it had a load on the hook.
Buenos Aires-based construction equipment provider Covema has been appointed the distributor of Manitowoc crawler cranes and Grove mobile cranes in Argentina.
Currently a Manitowoc Crane Care partner, Covema will now offer the company’s full range of All Terrain, Rough Terrain and crawler cranes throughout Argentina. It will also be responsible for providing spare parts, service and training.
Manitowoc’s vice president of sales for South America, Cristian Galaz, said: “This alliance will enhance our presence in Argentina with products that serve customers in the energy sector and many other industry sectors.”
Established in 1965, Covema is also the distributor for a range of construction and mining manufacturers including New Holland, Wirtgen, Schramm, AFM, Hamm, Kleemann and Vögele. Based just outside of Buenos Aires, the company is in situated close to Manitowoc’s production facility in Passo Fundo, Brazil.
Terex Cranes has launched the Terex Liftplan – a free online lift planning tool for customers’ lifting operations.
Users can select from a range of Terex cranes and specify the load, height and radius of the lift involved. A copy of the lift plan is then available to print out. The lift planning tool can also be used on site on an ad-hoc basis, so should conditions change, the driver simply enters the new information and the system automatically recalculates.
Michael Klein, product marketing said: “Historically, only customers with big machines and complicated lifts have used lift planning tools. Today this facility is available to anyone who uses a Terex crane, as it will allow smaller jobs to be better planned and therefore safer. It might be the fleet owner contracted to carry out a particular project, or one of his hire customers needing information on site.”
The new tool is available in nine different languages, uses either imperial or metric units and employs a variety of different methods to determine the best machine to deliver safety, performance and productivity on site.
South Australia based Fleurieu Cranes has taken delivery of the first Grove GMK6400 to arrive in Australia.
The company had originally intended to purchase a luffing jib for its existing 350 tonne Terex AC350/6 All Terrain crane, but after seeing the capabilities of the 400 tonne Grove GMK6400, the company’s management decided to add one to its fleet along with its full 79 metre luffing jib.
Fleurieu, which is based in the Adelaide suburb of Wingfield, purchased the GMK6400 through local Manitowoc dealer RMB Service Group. The crane joins three other Grove All Terrains in the company’s fleet – two 55 tonne Grove GMK3055 units and a 100 tonne GMK4100. The new GMK6400 travels in a trailing boom configuration, with a with a three axle boom trailer.
Philip Allen, who co-founded Fleurieu Cranes in 2005 with friends John Elliot and Nick Berry, said: “By adding another All Terrain crane in the 300 to 400 tonne capacity class, we have increased our company’s resources. And because the luffing jib provides impressive reach and capacity on the GMK6400, we’re also now able to work in new markets. As a result, we are able to bid projects including wind farm maintenance and tower crane erection. Our operators really like driving the Grove cranes.”
On arrival the GMK6400 went straight to work at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, dismantling a tower crane belonging to Select Plant. The GMK6400, configured with 44.8 metres of its 60 metre main boom plus 43 metres of luffing jib and 115 tonnes of counterweight, managed all the lifts comfortably, including the removal of the 13.7 tonne top section of the tower crane with the jib luffed to 80 degrees working at a radius of 46 metres.
“The Royal Adelaide Hospital job was high profile and an ideal first job for our GMK6400 in many ways,” said Allen. “The crane had ample capacity and the configuration worked really well with regards to height restrictions from the local airport. We also had a crane technician flown in from Manitowoc Crane Care to assist us through the job. The GMK6400 can lift so much more than anything else in our fleet, I think we will get strong demand for it beyond our traditional borders.”
Tadano has reported its nine month results, which show revenues up 15 percent for the year, while profits have risen more than 43 percent.
Total revenues for the nine months were ¥145.1 billion ($1.2 billion), 15 percent higher than last year, which was made up principally as follows:
Mobile cranes ¥97.4 billion ($822 million) – up 18.5 percent,
Loader Cranes ¥15.2 billion ($128 million),
Aerial work platforms ¥11.3 billion ($95.3 million).
Mobile crane sales in Japan increased 33 percent to ¥29.7 billion ($250.6 million), while exports were up 13 percent to ¥59.9 billion ($505.4 million).
Geographically sales for the period – all products – were up 24 percent in Europe, 23.5 percent in North America, 38 percent in South and Central America and 44 percent in Asia, while the Middle East was virtually flat and Australia/Oceania declined almost 19 percent.
The company expects the full year to end almost 10 percent up on last year, at ¥198 billion ($1.67 billion), of which mobile cranes will be around 67 percent. It expects pre-tax profits to come in around ¥25.8 billion ($217.7 million).
The company said: “The Japanese economy recovered at a gentle pace during the period under review. Personal consumption and production trended toward recovery. Reaction to the consumption tax hike weakened, while corporate earnings and capital investment remained largely unchanged. Falling crude oil prices and other factors have recently contributed to a sense of uncertainty. Within our industry, driven by factors including earthquake restoration and recovery, disaster preparedness and mitigation, and efforts to address an aging infrastructure, increasing utilisation rates in the Japanese market resulted in a perceived shortage of cranes. Demand grew, backed by rising prices and improving business confidence after the decision to hold the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.”
“Overall demand fell outside Japan, with some regional variation. Demand fell in North America and Australia, remained largely unchanged in the Middle East, and grew in Europe and Asia. Sales outside Japan increased 11.2 percent, thanks to company efforts that focused on expanding sales of larger products and on capturing demand related to plants and infrastructure.”
Another solid result from Tadano which is making good progress in sales in North America and parts of Europe. The company is building a solid following for its All Terrains worldwide and its Rough Terrain cranes in the USA where they are gaining an increased following, in spite of strong competition from the well regarded locally built products.
Tadano still lags the three other major manufacturers in terms of marketing and distribution, and even brand awareness, but the quality and reliability of its products is winning it a lot of repeat business. This year it is planning a host of new All Terrain cranes, including 70, 100 300 tonne models and possibly a new larger crane, rumoured to be in the 700 tonne region.
