Anyone who’s been following the Performance of Construction Index, or PCI, will have observed what can best be described as turbulence. Good months and bad months seem to randomly take turns across construction and its sub-sectors. But as growth and contraction take turns, cranes and lifting machines keep doing what they’ve always done.
The last PCI was showing growth in the construction sector, but there were some caveats. Australian Industry Group head of policy Peter Burn said the data suggested the sector was “near the top of the current [growth] cycle and that residential building is losing its position at the forefront of the restructuring of the economy”. He also noted that road and rail projects either underway or in planning were boosting the engineering construction sector, countering some of the downwards pressure from a slump in mining-related work.
Pace Cranes national sales manager Michael Cawston did note there were some troubles out west due to the mining sector pulling back, but much as the PCI he said there was good activity in eastern states. He said a lot of his company’s Maeda mini crawler cranes had been used in the glass industry, noting there was a fair bit of activity in high-rise and general construction. His general observation was customers were looking for more efficient ways of doing things.
As the construction market fluctuates, Pace Cranes is broadening its offerings with an eye on the long-term. Cawston said the company had dealt with Maeda machines for 26 years and the far larger SENNEBOGEN machines for six years.
But now, Italian VALLA pick-and-carry cranes are coming into Australia under the Pace Cranes banner, with American Shuttlelift mobile gantry cranes also arriving on the east coast. AML Equipment already distributes the machines out west; so this now means the specialist machines are available, more-or-less, all over Australia.
“We get approached by quite a lot of products; we are quite busy with the Maeda and SENNEBOGEN products, they’re all fairly niche products that we deal with,” he explained.
“The Shuttlelift product, the rubber-tyred gantry crane… it’s a very small niche industry. They’ve sort of come to us on the east coast because of what we have done with Maeda, bringing a product that wasn’t known in this country into the market.”
Shuttlelift has a dealer on the west coast called AML
When Pace Cranes introduced Maeda mini crawler cranes to Australia, the company raised awareness of the machines by hiring them out due to low initial demand to buy outright. After a few years, the company had amassed quite a large hire fleet, but when they began selling them outright, the hiring side of things was strategically pulled back. Cawston agreed with Cranes and Lifting that the company’s intention was to eventually build a similar relationship with the two new brands as it had done with Maeda and SENNEBOGEN.
Maxilift CEO Bob Davis told Cranes and Lifting that for his company, the new financial year was going well and he was confident for both the market and sales. UNIC vehicle-mounted cranes and mini crawler cranes had been selling very well, with the new six-tonne UNIC vehicle-loading crane “exceeding all expectations”.
He added that big capacity vehicle loading cranes were also a “positive developing market”. The year ahead is also looking good for Maxilift; Davis said his company had stepped up factory orders to ensure good stock levels to support demand for the rest of the financial year.
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