China a 'serious market' within two years says JLG's Satterley

JLG Industries hopes to be producing most of its aerial platform range at its new Tianjin plant in China within 18 months and is optimistic about the growth of demand in the country.

Andrew Satterley, who was appointed JLG's vice president - sales, marketing and customer support for Asia Pacific in March this year, told AI at the bauma China exhibition in Shanghai that he expected China to become "a fully fledged, serious market within two years". He said there was a growing focus on worker safety and productivity.

Todd Truax, JLG director of market development and sales operation in China, told AI, "Our experience is that it will grow faster than other developing markets. So being prepared is very important."

The Tianjin facility is making rapid progress in expanding its production range. The ES electric scissors are already being assembled and in the first quarter of 2011 the vertical mast 1230ES model will be added, to be followed by the 800 and 600 series booms.

Mr Satterley said JLG wanted most of the AWP range to be in production in China within 18 months; "Our aim is to get to 90% local content. We really are just getting started." Local production eliminates import duties and freight charges and that alone reduces machine costs by around 20%.

Tianjin will also become a design centre for Asia product. "We are just employing 10 engineers to develop Asia products, to modify for the local market", said Mr Satterley. The Tianjin design team will be led by John Dickerson, a JLG design veteran.

As well as meeting growing demand from China the facility will be used to supply other markets, including Australia, where many of the scissors produced so far have been shipped.

"Tianjin is a showroom for customers in Asia", said Mr Truax, "And we will leverage Tianjin to grow India as well."

"We're hoping that the Indian access market will double in the next three years", said Mr Satterley, "There's a lot of construction work going on and there is an acceptance of access platforms."

A large proportion of the existing Indian access fleet of around 2500 units is JLG, although the market differs from China in that used machines form a majority share of imports.