Displaying items by tag: Zoomlion

Italy: Zoomlion Europe has appointed Petre Babiceanu as its general manager. He will be responsible for the development of the company’s forklift, aerial work platform, tower and mobile crane business lines, as well as for the operational coordination of the company’s production plant in Italy.

Babiceanu holds over 20 years in senior management roles. His first post at Terra Holding was as Country Manager, when he was responsible for setting up the group's business in Romania. He later acted as South-East Regional Director and then as Group General Manager for Lifting Machinery, overseeing the development and distribution of various brands in the construction sector and starting a new lifting division. He holds a master's degree in civil engineering from the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest.

China-based Zoomlion established its European subsidiary in 2018 as a regional hub for the production and distribution of its branded product lines.

A Sinoma subsidiary was raking in the big bucks this week with the announcement that it had booked a Euro1.05bn order with the Egyptian government. The order was for six 6000t/day cement production lines plus assorted maintenance contracts from Chengdu Design and Research Institute of Building Materials Industry (CDI).

The order caps a busy month for Sinoma. At the start of June, another subsidiary, CBMI, said that it had picked up deals to build two new lines in Algeria for Groupe des Ciments d’Algérie. Around the same time another project in the country, a joint venture between Lafarge Algeria and Souakri Group, revealed that it had started commissioning its mill. Other assorted cement projects announced so far in 2016 include a waste heat recovery unit for Thai Pride Cement in Thailand, a conversion to coal burning at South Valley Cement in Egypt and various orders for mills via Loesche for Sinoma projects in Vietnam.

The scale of that latest Egyptian order becomes apparent when one looks at Sinoma, or China National Materials Group Corporation’s, annual results. It reported revenue of US$8.08bn in 2015, a slight decrease from US$8.38bn in 2014. Those six lines represent 13% of the group’s entire turnover in 2015. That’s one humongous order. The last time Sinoma signed a cement deal on this magnitude was in August 2015 when Nigerai’s Dangote placed an order at a value of US$1.49bn.

Elsewhere on the balance sheet for 2015, its profit fell markedly by 25% year-on-year to US$150m from US$200m. However, its new order intake grew by 14% to US$5.1bn. Overseas orders accounted for over three quarters of this or US$4.32bn, its highest level on record. This compares to its rival FLSmidth’s new order intake of US$2.8bn in 2015. It declared that it would continue to seek business outside of China in line with the country’s ‘One belt, one road’ policy focusing on Central Asia and South America.

This growth by Chinese engineering companies on the world stage may have been stymied in 2015. The Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau (VDMA) in Germany reported in April 2016 that the members of its Industrial Plant Manufacturers’ Group (AGAB) had booked orders of Euro19.5bn in 2015, a similar figure to its orders in 2014. This compared to a drop of 63% of large plant orders (not just cement) in 2014 from Euro5.29bn in 2013. AGAB saw opportunity in service industries for its German members as markets stalled in Russia and Brazil, and China’s property market faced its own problems. Research by UBS Evidence Lab, as reported by the Financial Times in May 2016, has taken a different view, suggesting that Chinese construction quarry equipment manufacturers such as Sany, Zoomlion and XCMG were likely to expand their market share outside of China to 15% by 2025. At present the research pegged them at 7%.

Expansion comes with its risks though. In late May 2016 Sinoma International Engineering reported details of a tax dispute it was suffering in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi subsidiary of the company was levelled with a request for unpaid back taxes from 2006 and 2008. At the time it was appealing against a bill of US$18m. In a changing global marketplace some things never change. Global success it seems is taxed.

Italy: Construction equipment and machinery manufacturer CIFA celebrated its 85th year of business on 12 September 2013. In attendance at a ceremony held at the company headquarters in Senago were the company's senior management, the CEO of CIFA Davide Cipolla and the President of Zoomlion Zhan Chunxin.

Highlights of the celebration included the inauguration of a company museum and showroom and the publication of a history of the company entitled 'CIFA: The winning anomaly.' The company also inaugurated the TEC (Testing European Centre), a centre where experimental activities and tests are carried out on machine bodywork and components. Other on-going activities for the anniversary included an in-house design centre that was launched earlier in 2013 as part of the anniversary and a facelift of the company headquarters due for completion in the autumn of 2013.