03.04.2001

Growth at Terex

"We had a total revenue of US$2.1 billion in 2000 and have experienced an average growth of 37 per cent a year since 1995" said Ron DeFeo, chairman of Terex Corporation at a press conference called on the first day of bauma.

"The reason we are successful is because we build user-friendly, simple equipment which we generally sell at 10 or 20 per cent lower prices than our competition" added DeFeo.

Looking specifically at Terex Lifting, which had a turnover of $924 million in 2000 (46 per cent of the total turnover), DeFeo said the company now had 50 per cent of the US crane market and 36 per cent worldwide.

Fil Filipov, president of Terex Lifting, added that his company's turnover in 1995 was just $252 million as compared to "almost $1 billion" this year. He said that Terex is now the leading supplier of mobile cranes in France, Italy and Spain and added that a CE approved crawler crane would soon be launched in Europe. The project to build Compact Truck cranes under licence at the Peiner factory in Trier has "run into technical and specification difficulties" which have delayed completion of the first model until the end of this year. Compact Truck meanwhile continues to build and market its own version of the cranes.

Turning to the aerial work platform business, DeFeo admitted that Terex had been unable to realise its aim of buying a large company to increase its market share in Europe. As a result it had decided to leave the business by selling its factories to Haulotte even though "I believe that this is a growth-oriented market".