East Kilbride based overhead crane manufacturer KONECRANES UK finished 2010 reporting growth year on year and entered 2011 with a healthy backlog of orders and new ones coming in.
Gordon Adie, Director of the Industrial Cranes Division, "Our Standard Duty Cranes with an increase of 7% in sales and 68% increase in orders received has all contributed of our 2010 result. That along with a 17% increase in orders received for our Heavy Duty Cranes meant that we met our profitability target for the year."
"There is no doubt that our ongoing investment in our East Kilbride design and manufacturing capacity is paying off. Demands from the different industry sectors that we service can vary enormously and we have been able to respond consistently to the established and emerging sectors with our portfolio of state of the art crane components. Waste to Energy, Power and Steel have been leading areas of growth for us and look to continue to be so for the foreseeable future."
As part of its programme of investment the company is currently setting up a specialised Jib Crane manufacturing area at East Kilbride to enable it to service the growing UK and export market. In addition, new overhead cranes will both replace and augment the company's manufacturing capabilities in the existing standard and heavy duty crane construction bays.
This programme of investment in the UK reflects the Global strategy of the Konecranes Group whose President and CEO Pekka Lundmark stated, "We are planning to increase our development spending in 2011. One of the most important pieces of our strategy going forward will be to increase our technology development to further improve our ability to enhance our customers' productivity. We have several important new products and services in the pipeline, some of which will hit the market already this year. Some of the key development themes are safety, eco-efficiency, automation, maintenance and control systems, and software in general."