Home and away

For Turkish manufacturers of hoists and motors, business is very good—both in the huge domestic market, and in the export markets surrounding the country and further afield. One of the drivers behind the strong market in Turkey is the level of innovation creating new products and improving the performance of existing technology.

Güralp, a manufacturer of lifting equipment including overhead travelling cranes, gantry cranes, jib cranes and transfer trolleys, recently launched its new GA monorail hoists series. The series offers a range of advantages over its predecessor, including increased lifting and travel speeds; more duty cycle options; ergonomic and light-weight design, improved headroom to maximise lifting height; and a maintenance-friendly direct drive cross travel mechanism, as opposed to a pinion drive.

Also recently added to the company’s portfolio is a series of scissor clamps for lifting marble and concrete slabs, with different variations for lifting a range of weights. Innovations such as the GA range and the scissor clamps are driven by the company’s research and development centre, the first accredited centre of its type in the Turkish crane industry, says Güralp. Since it was founded, the R&D centre has worked with various projects, and as a result of its work was last year awarded the title of an accredited R&D centre by the Turkey Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology.

“We had benefits of our investment to R&D projects with innovative point of view and vision that aim always keeps improving and sustainable success,” says the company’s chairman of the board. “Our research and development activities will increasingly continue in the following process with support of Turkey Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology.”

The company mainly exports to European countries, as well as Canada and South Africa. The GA monorail hoist series will be showcased at the CeMat exhibition this month in Hannover, Germany, amongst other products from Güralp.

And after a customer’s facility for producing components of heavy-duty wind turbines received a five-unit order of 120t cranes, the customer’s products are now being used in Germany and Denmark.

BVS Cranes, with a team of around 400 employees, manufactures cranes that are used in the public and private sectors, in Turkey and abroad.

The company manufactures crane and hoist products including standard wireroped hoists; overhead travelling cranes; gantry cranes; jib cranes; heavy-duty and high-capacity process cranes; speciallydesigned and custom cranes; and sectorbased transportation and lifting machines and equipment, such as harbour cranes, ship loader-unloaders, mobile ship loaders, and so forth.

The company currently supplies around 40% of its annual production to markets outside of Turkey, and is enjoying a strong performance in its domestic market too.

“BVS Cranes is the pioneer crane manufacturer in the domestic market in Turkey,” says Buket Aybasti, foreign trade and overseas sales specialist at BVS Cranes. “Because of the global crisis and the exchange rate fluctuation, lots of the companies had some challenges in 2017, but for BVS Cranes it was a very good year and we sold more than our 2017 target. In total, over than 800 units different type of cranes were sold and exported both to the domestic and foreign markets. 60% of these 800 units were for the domestic market.

“BVS Cranes has been exporting to more than 60 countries in four continents since 1985 from USA to Turkish-speaking countries in Central Asia]. Recently, we’ve mostly been exporting to Europe and the Middle East. 40% of our annual production is for foreign market.”

The company supplies a range of end-use sectors, and focuses on innovation. “Generally in recent years most of BVS Cranes’ projects were for the steel and iron industry, but at the same time we are manufacturing for driving markets as underground and highway construction projects, the energy sector for electric and natural gas power plants, and shipyards,” says Aybasti.

“As BVS Cranes, we are always following the latest technology for manufacturing our cranes. To exist for a long time in the market you should use the latest technology. “Our R&D department is working on new design of the standard hoisting units. The design is done with the help of some software and finally tested with finite element analysis software. Now the prototypes have been manufactured and physical tests are going on. “And also at the same time we are making upgrades on the existing equipments.”

Last year saw BVS Cranes produce innovative machines for the ports sector. “In 2017 BVS Cranes designed and manufactured a special shiploader project for loading soda ash for the ships. With a 1,500t per hour capacity it was the biggest capacity shiploader manufactured in Turkey. BVS Cranes also designed and manufactured a 300t per hour capacity mobile shiploader for working together with the main shiploader. All manufacturing, installation, tests and commissioning were conducted by BVS Cranes. For this project, all the conveyors and silos were manufactured by our steel construction company BCES. “This year, we are currently following some underground projects, highway projects and harbour projects in different areas in the world.”

MOTOR SKILLS

Imak, a manufacturer of drive systems used for hoists, has seen a similar split in terms of the activity in the domestic markets and abroad. However, the products that finally house the drives are mostly exported.

“The Turkey market represents 65% of our sales for hoist drives,” says export manager Haffar Salim. “We are supporting the Turkish hoist sector with tailored solutions for the industry leaders and technical support to small-mid-sized companies.

“Most of our products are actually destined to export. Products sold to Turkish manufacturers are in most cases exported. At the same time we are supply 35% of our gearboxes to companies based in more than 20 different countries.

“Beside Turkey, India represents our second big market for hoist products. Our partnership with MGM India for the drive part contributes to our growing leadership on this specific market. Our goal for 2018–2019 is to invest in a brand new mounting facility in India.

As well as that facility, the company has been innovating and growing and plans to continue to do so, says Salim: “2017 was a rich year in term of innovation. We added new sizes to most of our series. In the same time, we started the production of a new series for heavy-duty hoist applications. The series will hopefully be completed by the end of 2019 and help us to cover most of the current market needs, from small hoist to largecapacity crane applications.

“Regarding in-house investment, we will receive a new set of machines from our Korean and Japanese technical partners to increase our production capacity by the second half of 2018.

“We are currently in negotiations with customers in Turkey, Morocco and India. By the middle of this year we will hopefully be able to sign new contracts with them and start the production of very specific gearboxes for upcoming ultra-modern factories and ports to be built in these countries.”

Elk Motor highlights the strength of the Turkish market, as well as the company’s focus on the export sector.

“The lifting, crane and elevator market is one of the leading sectors in Turkey, with a huge volume,” says Alkan Demircioglu, sales and marketing manager at Elk Motor. “There are a lot of companies making production, and R&D in this area. There are some strong capacity OEMs in this branch of the market. We are not able to count motors sold specifically to this market, since we mainly deliver our motors from our factory directly to our distributors.

“As ELK Motor, we want to improve business especially in export. Currently we have some particular regions in the world where we are already strong with our products like motors, and gearboxes. To grow the business further, we take as our initial target the Western European motor markets in particular. To do this, we prepare ourselves with higher manufacturing technologies, selfauditing, reporting, and so on. We made real investments in 2018 in the machining area of our factory to increase our product range.”

Investments in the factory and product range are just one part of the company’s efforts to meet demand for increased motor efficiency, says Demircioglu: “Top efficiency levels are driving the motor market. Therefore, as Elk Motor, we mainly try to focus on IE3, and IE4 motor production. We organise technical seminars through the country, and be together with our distributors, and end customers.”

Elk Motor is also planning a major expansion move later this year, says Demircioglu: “Elk Motor’s current factory is located in Cerkezkoy, Tekirday with a capacity of 1m motor pieces per annum, actively manufacturing 300,000 AC motors in a 40,000 sq m closed factory area. This factory is going to be moved to our new plant in summer 2018, again located in Cerkezkoy, but a modern and integrated one with bigger production capacity.”