“Do you really enjoy commuting 40 km a day?” A former colleague broke into Conny Persson’s office in Kalmar, Sweden with a question like this. It was a summer morning in 1994. Twenty-four years later, Conny Persson, a major figure in the industry of heavy-duty lift trucks across the world, is now sitting in his Shanghai office (snowing outside) that is 8000 km away from home, interviewed by FORKLIFT magazine.

Together with other eight senior executives, Conny left Kalmar. However, they started an amazing journey from SMV（Silverdalens Mekaniska Verkstad）to KONECRANES since then. As a senior manager of forklift trucks business division in KONECRANES, he welcomed his old friend Ken Loh and the entire KCL team with arms wide open to join KONECRANES family. “I’m happy about what’s happening now and looking forward to all the things that are going to happen! ” Conny said.

KCL Lifttrucks was officially authorized by KONECRANES as a distributor for mobile equipment business in China at the end of January, 2018. Throughout this combination of capital, technology and service, there is another powerful driver, Lars Fredin, senior Vice President of the Konecranes lift trucks business unit. Lars had been a senior executive in Kalmar for a long time. When Lars worked for Kalmar’s Bromma branch, Ken Loh was tapping the market at the other end of world as head of the Asia-Pacific market. With nearly 30 years of experience in management, Ken Loh led a number of reform projects in Asian port crane market. Lars Fredin remembered clearly the days they worked together: “I worked with him, so I know what he can do. The skills and extensive experience with clients he and KCL team brought will give us the confidence to take the lead in China market and the Hong Kong market.”

KONECRANES makes the most durable forklift trucks in the world.

In April 1994, as the world-leading crane manufacturer, KONECRANES was listed on Helsinki Stock Exchange. SMV, a part of the future core business of KONECRANES, is faced with challenge of restructuring.

Conny was then an executive at Kalmar, but he and some clients were thinking about cooperation in a more flexible model. Conny joined SMV later with this idea in mind to start his own lift trucks business.

They were staking all on a single throw. After 8 months of zero income, the SMV people, with their reliable and creative mind, brought into market a new generation of ultimate lift trucks made by the strictest standard, and won an unexpected success. SMV soon built a factory in Markaryd, Småland of Sweden in 1995 and launched a new series of products, including container handlers, lift trucks and industrial forklifts. The factory started to make profit in 1996, and won its share successively in Europe, South Africa and Far East and even in Australia in the following years.

“As early as the 1990s when the container handling technology was widely used, our first-generation products used advanced hydraulic system for a stronger performance. Our second-generation products are equipped with creative electronic devices to control the security system to ensure that the driver can balance safety, speed and accuracy.” Conny recalled.

SMV and KONECRANES found each other in a project in South Africa. KONECRANES acquired SMV as one of its business unit in 2004 and brought it into a new development stage in a larger scale. KONECRANES established its Lingang factory as a new factory in 2007. In the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, the rapid rebound of Chinese market has drawn KONECRANES’s growing attention to this emerging market with huge potential.

Active Chinese market requires more flexible and innovative customer services

Founded in 1910 in Finland, KONECRANES is a century-old leader in global industrial cranes with a long and steady market share that has accelerated significantly in the last decade.

“Our revenue has achieved five-fold increase since 2004.” Lars Fredin said. The relatively low financial figure and market change in 2013 gave KONECRANES a new strategic goal. The company has always maintained the spirit of exploration and curiosity, especially during the slower increase period when sufficient self-confidence and activeness are further needed.

In the following 5 years, KONECRANES realized the “activeness” of products through a series of actions: KONECRANES first acquired Linde Group in 2013, and then included some of Terex-Fantuzzi/PPM products into KONECRANES family in 2017. But in terms of service, Conny believes “we’re progressing every day, but when it comes to the promptness of delivery and service, there is plenty of room for improvement.” This is no doubt a common problem in the world of lift trucks and port cranes, and also a breakthrough point many enterprises have anticipated to achieve in 2018.

How to break the ground in the face of the upgrading demand for quality and service in Chinese market? For world-class brands intended to gain sustainable growth in Chinese market, they need a local team with good technical skills, familiarity with product language, knowledge of user demands and industry, and strong sense of belonging. It's the factor that is valued most by KONECRANES in partnership with KCL lifttrucks. On the day of the contract signing, people at Lingang factory prepared a one-meter big cake with a design of Konecranes reach stackers to mark this special moment.

KCL was built by Ken Loh who led a number of reform projects in Asian port machinery market, especially in the Greater China. With his insight into products and user demands, his ability to innovate and the activeness of the whole team have been demonstrated in user service, enterprise management, product and process control. So far, KCL has launched a service network that covers the Greater China and Hong Kong, and relevant directors have also expressed their intention to continuously invest more in speed and efficiency.

We have learnt that KCL has successively delivered several reach stackers and lift trucks to clients after Spring Festival, including reach stackers with the most mature TRUCONNECT® function in the current market.

With higher efficiency of KONECRANES lift trucks, reintegration of Chinese heavy-duty lift trucks market stares in the face

In the use of lift trucks, up time is a feature that clients value most. "KONECRANES lift trucks are mostly running in high intensity on a 24/7 basis, and this leads to equipment failures. How soon can KONECRANES provide new components and maintenance services?” said Lars Fredin. Therefore, KONECRANES factories have guaranteed to provide high quality products, original spare parts and product supports. "Our partner KCL will provide the efficient customer service to guarantee the up time that our clients need.

"KONECRANES’s rapid response by association with KCL is a very exceptional case. It is reported that impressive progresses were made throughout thelift trucks industry in 2017. But if we cannot see any innovation and breakthrough in the efficiency and service at a specific stage of technical improvement, a sluggish market will be inevitable.

Therefore, KONECRANES attaches great importance to the continuous optimization of TRUCONNECT, the remote monitoring system. TRUCONNECT, with a great application record in the market, enables our users to track the use of reach stackers by remote connection. A geofence feature, KONECRANES WORK ZONE, is added to TRUCONNECT as an excellent supplement to the existing functions, such as tire pressure monitoring, counting of equipment abnormal impacts and particles in hydraulic oil, calculation and load mapping of water content, fuel consumption, quantity of hoisted containers and hoisting speed.

From the perspective of equipment use, our clients spend money on purchase, maintenance and service of equipment as well as time cost from downtime, and so on. Throughout the life cycle of a machine, the proportion of service cost increases day by day, and sometimes even far more than the purchase cost. KONECRANES’s annual report in recent years shows that the service department has long outstripped the equipment department in profits and becomes the group's "most profitable" department. Will this be the same in Chinese market?

As a new milestone event, the strong alliance of KONECRANES and KCL will bring the innovative service in a new way to China market and Hong Kong market, and make continuous breakthroughs in the sales of heavy-duty lift trucks and in the customer experience.

"Stay hungry, Stay foolish." Steve Jobs told people to be a crazy innovator and never be satisfied with your pursuit. It is just a beginning, but the big coalition of three battleships of the "seagreen army" shows their confidence to the whole market.

About Konecranes
Konecranes is a world-leading group of Lifting Businesses™, serving a broad range of customers, including manufacturing and process industries, shipyards, ports and terminals. Konecranes provides productivity enhancing lifting solutions as well as services for lifting equipment of all makes. The Group has 17,000 employees at 600 locations in 50 countries. Konecranes class A shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki (symbol: KCR).