Netherland based Nemag has joined forces with the Delft University of Technology to develop a new software model with the aim of making a more rapid prototype that can simulate interaction of the grab with the material it is handling. According to Nemag Sales Manager, Riny Stoutjesdyk, there are high hopes that “something very interesting” will come from the liaison project. “We’re hoping the co-operation will accelerate development of our equipment and boost our market potential.” Work has already begun on new equipment design and no one yet knows where it will lead. Stoutjesdyk adds: “As far as we know this work with simulation models has never been done before by any grab manufacturer. Before product development was all done by trial and error.” Nemag recently introduced a newly-designed, more environmentally friendly, enclosed type clamshell grab to its product range, which it claims sets “new standards in environmentally friendly bulk handling.” The grab features rounded corners – introducing what Nemag calls a new, revolutionary shape for the shells – and also featuring a number of innovations which reduce spillage. Other manufacturers are also looking to technology and innovation to hold market share in the future. It will also help counter the fickle Euro crisis, or as one grab manufacturer put it, “wherever the next crisis is in the world.”
Markets kind
World market conditions have been kind for some but not all companies in the grab business in 2012 and again last year and for Verstegen Grijpers BV of the Netherlands, 2013 was a record in terms of turnover and results. A good order book, especially outside Europe, has carried into 2014, says Peter Visser, Sales Director, for Verstegen. “We are working on a lot of different projects. We don’t know if it will be another record year, but we are confident it will be another good year.” Strong relationships with Liebherr Maritime Benelux BV and Terex Gottwald Mobile Harbour Cranes have seen more than 500 grabs delivered in recent years. Specialists in rope operated mechanical clamshell and orange peel grabs – Verstegen builds grabs for four-rope operated ship cranes – the grabs can be changed from iron ore unloader to an efficient coal or limestone unloader within 15 minutes, only by changing the grab. As for innovation, Verstegen uses only the best possible high tensile and wear resistant steel giving them stronger grabs with a lower deadweight that are reliable and last longer, according to Visser. The lighter weights allow Verstegen to offer “much higher production rates” than competitors.
Markets unkind
Not all the 2013 news was good, however, and at least one major manufacturer was forced to resort to layoffs. Thought by many to be the largest grab maker in the world, Salzgitter Maschinenbau AG (SMAG) announced last September that it was letting about 80 of its 400 workers go in a restructuring caused by a cyclical sales slump. “Compared to the very successful last few years, the year 2013 has been challenging for us,” says Peiner SMAG Lifting Technologies GmbH division Area Sales Manager, Ninko Mijatovic, from his German office. “However, due to a huge order backlog we were able to achieve a satisfactory annual result.” In fact, the industry leader, which makes “above average investments in research & development,” reports that the outlook for the current business year and the order book situation are “so far quite good.” Boosted by a better year for the shipbuilding industry and its construction installation of grabs on derrick cranes, SMAG is poised to reap any recovery in this market segment. Mijatovic also notes that the company is well positioned in the waste combustion and scrap handling industries. SMAG sees the Asian market as the most important one this year with a booming energy and waste sector. Several incineration plants are in development worldwide and SMAG is finding as are other in-tune grab makers that “generally the protection of the environment has become more important to its customers.”
Good year
Mark 2013 down as “a really good year” for The Grab Specialist (TGS) in the Netherland, says Sales Manager, Edward Gijswijt. “We have been very, very busy and didn’t feel any bad economy problems.” So far, 2014 is improving after a quiet start, he adds. Innovation is to the fore with TGS says Gijswijt and “every new grab is improved over past models.” The Dutch company is building much bigger grabs than it did just a decade ago and they’re not just bigger they’re better. There’s no room for complacency in the highly competitive grab market, either, and Gijswijt says improvements happen so quickly these days, “no one sits, we have to stay on top.” Recent sales went to contracts on the Hudson River in New York where 10 TGS grabs are helping in pollution cleanup; other sales have gone to the Middle East and South America.
Shaping better
Another of the big guns of grab manufacture, Orts GmbH saw 2013 finish “a little bit better than it started,” and so far 2014 is shaping as a step up from that. Last year, “shipbuilding came to a full stop and we felt it at once,” says Sigvard Orts Jr, company Vice President. “This year some shipping companies are starting their new building projects, but many are in the pipeline and not secure.” Orts Jr doesn’t have a great deal of confidence in the global economy, either. At the moment, he says, the world economy is more often affected by a crisis. If not the Euro crisis, then another is heating up somewhere, and China is slow and a bit sensitive to market pressures as is South America. “We’re waiting for the next impact somewhere, but right now things are not so bad.” As for innovation, Orts says there’s nothing special, just “continuously improving” such things as weight reduction of the grabs. Recent sales successes include an order for four bulk carrier grabs and associated cranes with the promise of more. Orts also sold two clamshell grabs to Oldendorff Shipping in Germany, two more grabs to Ugland Shipping in Norway and other grab sales throughout Europe, China and Japan.
Difficult year
In Spain, 2013 was a difficult year for Credeblug SL and the firm’s Director Commercial, Jose Zubeldia, is hoping2014 will be a better one. Some 80% of Credeblug grab sales are outside Spain and Zubeldia says customers are attracted to the grabs because of quality and price advantages. International competition has also helped improve the grabs based on performance and ability to compete. Meanwhile, the heavily subsidised world of bio mass fuel use in Europe has Nemag’s Riny Stoutjesdyk worried. While you’ll find more and more Nemag grabs working the bio mass stockpiles these days, he wonders how long government subsidies can remain. “I’m pretty sure the money will disappear and my personal feeling is that bio mass may fall apart within another five years.” In North America, specialist grab maker Cable Arm Inc has modified its dredging grabs to meet exacting water quality standards, says Ray Bergeron, President & owner of the Trenton, Michigan company. “When water quality is an issue in dredging then I win every time,” he says. “I’m the only one who can meet exacting parts per million cleanup goals.”
Hurricane Sandy
Cable Arm, which has been in business for 25 years, can also thank Hurricane Sandy – the deadliest hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic season – for a surge in work removing sediment from fouled rivers and harbours over normal maintenance dredging demands. The second costliest hurricane in United States history, Sandy devastated shorelines and beaches as well as leaving behind mountains of sediment build up well beyond normal dredging needs. For Bergeron and his team, it meant huge demand for dredging grabs. Innovation has also been the ticket for Cable Arm in its environmental clamshell dredging projects. Its ClamVision grab features an over-square footprint, lightweight, an open centre venting system, and overlapping side plates that reduce windrowing of material during bucket closure. Bergeron ha
s had sales successes in the USA and Canada, especially in the Great Lakes which are a strong market. He’s also selling to Japan and Europe and says the company he founded is as “busy as I’ve ever been.”
Trade shows
Another North American company working hard to raise its international profile is the award-winning Anvil Attachments of Louisiana. Anvil’s grabs have been used all over the world from helping remove the World Trade Centre debris from 9/11 to helping build the man-made islands of Dubai. Company President Jon Craft and his team have been hitting the trade shows of late with new innovations as they fight to increase market share.
One of these is a complete revamp of its four-tine magnet grapples, which started with a dusting off of a familiar and lightly-marketed product. The grapple was studied and modified to bring improvements using Anvil’s finite element analysis (FEA) 3D model software program. The result was “the lightest grapple possible while keeping all the strength and integrity in place,” says Jeff Wallace, Anvil’s Engineering Manager. Then using its LEAN manufacturing process, which cuts waste associated with the manufacture of a product, the company produced a higher quality product at a substantial cost reduction. For ports and stevedores, Anvil has added a diesel hydraulic clamshell to its line. The totally self-contained unit is able to attach and run off any crane and does not rely on ship hydraulic hoses or electric power to operate.