Cranes tower at Bauma china

Dominating the skyline, as always, are the new cranes at the vast bauma China exhibition in Shanghai this week.

Despite the market downturn of the last two years, crane manufacturers have continued with product development programmes, albeit less prolifically.

Unlike the last show in 2012 there is no 3,600 tonne capacity crawler crane or 2,000 tonne capacity all terrain crane. Overall there are far fewer new crawler cranes and all terrains this year while there is a noticeable increase in the number of tower cranes, including large, higher capacity ones.

A brief initial walk around the show on the first day soon revealed the first of several surprises. Few if any potential crane buyers would have expected to see an all terrain crane with a set of crawler tracks grafted on to it. This 'dual purpose' machine is built by leading Chinese manufacturer XCMG.

Look out for more details on this and many other exciting new product developments in International Cranes and Specialized Transport, at www.khl.com/cranes and on IC's Facebook page, Linkedin group Cranes and Lifting Professionals and on Twitter.