CHINA FOCUS
30
Genie believes the turning point for powered
access equipment in China could be just around
the corner.
ChrisSleight
reports.
ft2 (26,000m2) facility, as generalmanager
ClintWeber explains.
“If youwere to compare last year to this
year,we have brought in 15models that we
are building instead of importing now,”he
says. “We’ve had good growth, but it’s not just
China.Changzhou supportsAsia-Pacific now,
so it’s amuch bigger piece of the pie.”
This has seen the facility’s workforce
swell from 140 staff a year ago tomore than
210.But it is not just aboutmore people on
the production side.There is also a design
capability inChangzhou, and one of the
priorities at themoment is to localise the
productsmore to take out costs.
Exponential growth
“We have a strategic plan, and the point is
that anythingwe do to take cost out will
be imperceptible.We aremaintaining the
global standard of ourmachines. If wewere
to localise a component or weld something
inhouse, it has to pass all the rigours of the
GenieEngineering Standards that we have,
which are difficult to pass, rightfully so.There
are opportunities to take cost out, but we’re
not going to go to the lowest of the low.
While theChangzhou plant has come to
establish itself asGenie’s regional hub for
Asia-Pacific, the big prize is of courseChina,
T
erexAWPhas had a presence in
Chinawith itsGenie brand since
themid-1990s. It started out selling
big telescopic boom platforms toChinese
shipyards, building its business up to a point
in 2010when it opened a dedicated access
platform factory inChangzhou.
It is amark of how far the business has
come that today theChangzhou factory is
Genie’s global production centre for shipyard
booms.On the regional level, it also builds
numerous othermodels for sale throughout
Asia-Pacific and of course has a big focus on
the potentially hugeChinesemarket.
Despite a continued slow-down in the
Chinese constructionmarket, the ramping-up
of production for thewider regionhas seen
big changes over the last year at the 278,000
which is by far the biggest construction
equipmentmarket in theworld in unit
terms.But although staple construction
machines like excavators and loaders sell in
the hundreds of thousands per year inChina,
access platforms are far from enjoying the
same level of acceptance.
However, this tipping point is just around
the corner according to JimBarr,Terex
AWP’s vice president and generalmanager for
GreaterChina.
“Obviously everybody’s waiting for that
exponential growth that happens innew
markets. InKorea it happened in 1999,
Singapore happened in the early 1990s and
Australia happened around 1988.There’s an
inflection point andChina feels very close
to that, at least frommy experience in the
marketplace,”he says.
One of the curious things about this is that
platform sales inChina are on the up at the
timewhen thewider construction equipment
industry is suffering a third straight year of
contraction, following the huge stimulus-
spending boom of 2009 to 2011.
Mr Barr acknowledges this. “It’s going from
strength- to-strength, but at the same time
we’re cautious.A lot of the key elements in the
marketplace are there for that inflection point.
Ahuge projectmight push it, or a change
Tipping
point
Genie boom lifts on site in China.
Genie’s Changzhou, China factory is
nowmaking eight scissor lifts per
day, among other products.
The exterior of the
Changzhou factory.
access
INTERNATIONAL
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2014
