Tanfield to raise prices, but not on stock machines
23 September 2008
Richard Tindale, Tanfield's sales and marketing director, told Access International; "UpRight will increase prices by about the same amount [as its major competitors]. But the impact won't reach customers until the current stock is sold." The stock comprises mainly mid-sized articulated booms and small electric scissors.
Mr Tindale downplayed speculation about the group's future resulting from its collapsed share price. "We've stopped the supply chain on machines. The change from cash burn to cash generation is quite quick...The Kansas expansion [at the Snorkel facility] is virtually complete. The cash burn is over."
One hundred redundancies have just been made at the Snorkel facility following on from a smaller number of lay-offs at the Vigo plant in the UK.
He said the company had taken some "decent" orders during APEX and that the company had not been overexposed to the major rental companies who have cut back on their spending, the exception being in Spain.
During APEX the company focused on showing the breadth of its product range, with five new machines, three being the result of cooperation with other manufacturers. The trailer mounted XT24AL, a 9 m working height model, is designed and built by PLE Inc in the US and assembled by Planet Platforms in the UK, but will now be available through UpRight.
The other two ‘badged' models are both built by Netherlands based Omega Lift, with the most attention focused on the massive X80ND, a diesel-powered, 26.5 m working height scissor with a width of just 1.24 m. The other model was the crawler mounted10.5 m working height X28T scissor.
"Omega is working with us in developing some machines", said Mr Tindale, "We will manufacture the scissor stacks using our own supply chain, and we are working together on some new designs." These are likely to be mid-to-large sized rough terrain scissors; "Omega is experienced in building those", said Mr Tindale.
The other two new models were the UpRight TL34 trailer, a "back to basics" low cost trailer providing a working height of up to 12.2m and 5m of outreach, and the UpRight X33BE scissor, a bi-energy version of the X33RT rough terrain scissor lift.
