Found interseting article in the Aug,19th 2010 issue of "The Economist"
Article states:
"Japan has long kept the cost of capital low, to boost investment or help stragglers. Since the financial crisis began, bureaucratic organs such as the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation have been handed $25 billion to revitalise ailing companies. Among the latter agency's first acts was to assist a dying wireless operator that bet on archaic technology.

Food for zombies

The system almost guarantees that fresh capital goes to the losers of yesteryear. Because struggling companies rarely die, new ones do not form. Japan's bankruptcy rate is half of America's; the rate at which it creates new firms is only a third as high. Japanese venture capitalists are few and far between. Japan's bureaucratic allocation of credit seldom spurs animal spirits. Rather, it nourishes zombies."
What are your thoughts?
Does anyone know information about Hitatchi's involvement in the formation of incj? Curious minds would like to know!

Don't really know where they are built. I know the contact details are NACCO in the UK. Be interesting to see how these pans out.

What are they and where are they built?

From what i have seen they are being sold by Hyster dealers who need a low cost truck to compete with other low cost manufactures brands from China and India. Be interesting in Briggs takes them on in UK and US.There will be two types of markets Low cost market in parts of Asia and south America and the higher more demanding markets of Europe and North America

they look familiar !!!!!????????

last year they would have claimed them as heavy duty

What will that do to Hyster /Yale distribution I wonder.

I have seen that NACCO have entered the Economy market place with a new brand called Utilev , who will be the next big manufacture to enter this market place

sorry chaps. I think the word I mean't was " Integrate" rather than absorb! Looks like it's going that way for the latest consolidation eh? !

i would not be surprised if Sany did not enter with a bid for Nissian

Agreed Misterlift, and there are already plenty of "Marriages" out there, some of which are not general knowledge and this will continue to be the norm.
In some markets there has even been brand revival (Edward will know of one I refer to) for marketing reasons.

Pipefab, on the Cat/Mit part your statement applies to NA only as dual brand dealers are used where as for EAME and Asia that is not the case.

Edward. I cannot speak for the US automobile industry nor can I speak on the merits of a true free market but certainly in Europe in that industry, you do not see as many manufaturers coming together in the production of the final product and then competing in the same market. I recall Honda and Leyland did it many years ago for a short term before they split but ithis practice is much more widespread in lift trucks than it is in cars.

In the past certain brands have been lost- Boss and Lansing to name a couple but I dont think that trend will continue. Brands become shop-windows and the more shop windows a factory has, the more- routes-to-market available, is only going to increase volume which is the food these factories need.

The brand has to be not 'broken' however. The Boss name was about finished when Jungheinrich took it over but Lansing remained a strong brand. If Linde re-introduced the same Linde truck as a Lansing and painted it yellow through a local dealer netwoirk, the factory will not sell fewer machines as a result. Multi-branding from a single source is not new but the over-capacity will ensure this policy will remain.

I think Misterlift may have missed out on seeing the brands disappearances in the US Auto industry as the "cure" for the US auto industry, only a few years ago. (Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, Plymouth all disappeared in only a few months, with not much change in the number of overall cars on the road or amount of commercials selling new vehicles in the media)
While Misterlift's observation would be correct in a true "free market", I think we can say that because those "obvious universal truths of a free market" do not hold up, that we are not in a true 'free market*'.
If the end user was the actual driving force of the market the manufacturers are selling to and manufacturing for, then having more sales channels would make sense, but as (it appears to me) the manufacturers view the distributors as their market, then to please the customer (the distributor, not the end user), having less brands and less competition makes the product more likely to be seen as having unique selling advantages.

* we do not have a 'true free market', IMHO, as free markets expect and require limited supply and unlimited desire/demand. However, due to limited demand, not limited supply, our market forces have become skewed, and not -just- in the powered industrial truck markets.

Whilst consolidation of manufacturing facilities makes perfect sense to reduce costs, the days of losing brand names such as Boss and Lansing are behind us I think.

Brand identity is an emotive subject in marketing and even reaching to customers. If a factory can produce a simple, low cost range and brand that same product using different identities and different methods of distribution then it makes perfect sense. There is one Company that makes a single product, use any combination of upto 5 brand names and use whichever names and distribution channels that are most appropriate to that particular country.

If two brands or channels clash over the same deal - what do the factories care? They will win either way.

My view is therefore a continued consolidation of manufacturing with more 'marriages of convenience' at production level and multi-brand at distribution level will be the way ahead.

Industry news - This weeks news section about a week and half ago. Been in other trade press. Try 'Newsnow...forklifts' on the net. Who's next?

Henley, where are you getting this info. I'd like to have a look for myself.

Thanks.

Nissan have been looking for a way out of forklifts for a number of years. I think the TCM deal is to tempt other interested parties out don't rule out Mitsubishi looking at this it might sound strange at the moment but stranger things have happened. One thing is for sure it will be a Japanese company that will get Nissan and the Nissan name will go from forklifts