i Like that , I think KION as a group might still be there but i think the new owner will be more prominent. One of the Chinese manufactures by the shear size of these companies will be up there , Then you will have but not guaranteed Toyota in some form then the new INCJ who will i'm sure will take over part of MCFE and Junghienrich then it anybodies guess who will be next, Crown Clark and Doosan looks like a good tie up. These again do work together. What will be more interesting is markets North America and Europe won't be as important as they are now. Asia will be the dominate area with South america also being important. NACCO to me is the very interesting one with the backing of SAMMON'S they can be right up there. But unfortunately i can see the rest struggling and even some not surviving. What has all ways driven any business is innovation but in the forklift industry this has not really happened. In this i mean counter ballance forklift not warehouse trucks were innovation products have been plenty.



Also over the next five years one company is going to develop a new product that will dominate this type of equipment and change this type of truck for ever


If you look at the mobile phone industry up to 2007 the dominate companies were Nokia, Sony Ericsson then Apple Launched the i Phone in 2007 and now apple and samsung are dominate Innovation can change a industry this is happening all the time in other areas of industry it won't be long before the materials handling industry catch's up. Nokia and Sony are now behinde in less than six years. If it can happen in one industry it can happen in ALL



Way back in 1997 Apple was a company that looked bankrupt with no real direction Steve Jobs came back to lead the company first with the iPod then the iStore now with the iPhone and iPad to become the world's most valuable company.

What the Apple designers did was to look at products people used bring in some innovation develop a platform and software then give people what they wanted , The service companies on the back of these new products developed services which their customers wanted to use and have that brought a benefit to each of them. I would also like to point that as far as i'm aware iPhones are made in China this has not damaged Apple ability to sell these.


What our industry needs is for a company to develop a new type of platform and running system that the service companies can then develop better services around. I have been in and around this industry for over 20 years and in that time there has been no real innovation at least nothing like other industries. the first company to do this will be like Apple the ultimate market Leader, Linde and some other companies have been at the fore front so far but they have to move even quicker if they want to stay there.