JOB: POR-P01-M04027C
T: 4. 5"
T:
7
.
2
5"
It’s true. The Bayonne Bridge has achieved navigational
clearance of 215 feet. This means greater opportunity
for ships at one of the busiest ports in the world. Larger
ships of 18,000 TEUs: we’re ready to welcome you.
The Port of New York and New Jersey is delivering the
goods, even more than before.
Big Ships?
We’re Ready For You.
lifts available in the industrial market.”
Other manufacturers have “value” brands,
but Manitou says what will set its forklifts
apart is that they’ll be designed to the
same quality and service standards that its
heavy-duty equipment is known for.
Similarly, Germany’s Kion Group, the
world’s second-largest manufacturer of
forklifts, is focusing in 2017 and 2018
on gaining a stronger foothold in the
U.S. warehousing market. At ProMat,
Kion previewed an extensive lineup of
brand-new trucks designed specifically
for this market—four from Linde (
electric and IC models) and a diesel-powered
model from its Baoli brand, which made
its North American debut in late 2015.
Another Linde electric was introduced
prior to the show, and the company said
it would launch yet another Linde electric, a line of Linde lithium-ion–powered
trucks, and two more Baoli models by the
end of 2017.
One reason Kion has been slow to
expand its market share in the U.S. is that
its Linde brand, the top seller in Europe,
is often perceived as too high-quality and
expensive for the market—a Mercedes-Benz where a Ford or a Volkswagen might
do. Kion is addressing that head-on,
spending more than $5 million to reconfigure and upgrade production lines at
its Summerville, S.C., plant this year and
introducing new efficiencies and other
cost-saving changes. “[The new models]
are the same high-quality forklifts that
our customers have come to rely on, but
at a price point we’ve never been able to
deliver before,” said Kion North America
President and CEO Vincent Halma. The
company expects that strategy to pay off:
Its goal is to increase production capacity
in Summerville to 12,000 lift trucks annually by 2020, up from 3,000 in 2015.
ROOM FOR ALL
BYD, Manitou, and Kion are not the
only forklift manufacturers that believe
there is plenty of room for new providers and new products in the U.S. and
North American warehouse markets.
Since the end of the Great Recession, oth-
ers have begun distributing here, includ-
ing China’s LiuGong, which entered the
North American market in 2011. Heli
manufacturer Anhui Heli, last year
signaled its intent to expand in
North America when it began hir-
ing engineers for a new U.S. design
center; among the center’s charges
is designing new products for the
North American market.
With demand continuing to grow,
others are likely to follow, either
entering the market for the first time
or expanding their product lines.
If conditions continue as they have
been for the past two years, then
there could well be room at the table
for everyone.
