IC reports from BICES

The BICES exhibition in Beijing this month (November) underlined the fact that the already huge mobile crane market in China is still growing. As the market grows, more and more manufacturers are attracted to the crane sector and BICES certainly illustrated that it was simply full of cranes, many of them new to the scene.

China's mobile crane market stands at somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 units a year - but the actual figure could be higher. Growth this year, spurred on by massive infrastructure investment, could be around 10%. That level of growth bucks the trend in the overall construction equipment market where activity has been slightly down this year. Next year, however, growth in China's economy is expected to expand and it could reach around 10% (GDP). That growth will inevitably have an impact on construction equipment in general and certainly on the crane sector.

The vast majority of cranes sold in the China market are truck cranes. Sales of all terrains and crawlers combined hardly reaches the 4% mark in unit terms. In value terms, however, as all terrains become more popular and crawler cranes become ever bigger, the financial importance of the niche will become much greater.

Back to BICES, all the major international and Chinese crane producers had new or recently introduced cranes at the show and there were many recent new comers as well. While XCMG and Zoomlion still lead the domestic market, there are many players, including Terex, Manitowoc and now LiuGong looking to make a match of it. Sany, FUWA, Lovol and others are also looking to continue the expansion of the crawler sector.