Working it out
As we put the finishing touches to the February magazine, news was hitting about Sany’s acquisition of Putzmeister as were rumours of XCMG moving for a stake in Schwing-Stetter. Suddenly the landscape of the industry is taking on a very different shape. The questions is: how do either of these deals affect us in the region?
Well, in the short term, the simple answer is probably not very much, there are corporate cultures to be integrated; objectives to be set out first. But further ahead, the mixture of European know-how and Chinese ambition means we can expect some new and unseen machines delivered in entirely new ways. Make no mistake, tackling the Middle East market is one of the reasons these deals have happened. Chinese companies have told me on many occasions that they struggle here and now they can set to work on not only capitalising on their new acquisitions’ strength here but also use existing networks to push their own ranges.
The Middle East is likely to remain a compelling argument for other Chinese companies to follow suit and hit the acquisition trial too for as long as the mature markets struggle.
After a couple of years of stagnation, the early signs are that the market could experience a huge amount of change in the next 12 months, so we’re not resting on our laurels and working hard to make CMME even better positioned to cover it.
