Morris Material Handling has decided the time has come to cease to be an international player and consolidate in North America. That some or all of the company would be sold was well known. The strategy chosen, however, has the effect of turning the clock back to before 1994, the year that P&H Material Handling bought UK-based Morris Mechanical Handling and joined together two of the oldest names in the lifting industry.
Alonzo Pawling and Henry Harnischfeger shipped their first crane in 1988; P&H became the brand and, after the death of Pawling in 1914, Harnischfeger became the name of the company. In the UK Morris has an equally illustrious pedigree dating back to the nineteenth century, although it has a tortuous history of ownership changes. When Morris and P&H came together, the chosen name for the new company was Morris Material Handling.
A simple outcome, one might have thought, would see the P&H name being revived for the American company and Morris given to the companies being sold – a simple return to the pre-merger scenario. That is unlikely to happen, for two reasons.
Firstly, vice president-finance David Smith says there are more likely to be a series of mini sales than one big one. This indicates that Morris has already tried and failed to make a single deal for a) the whole company, and b) the former Morris Mechanical companies outside North America.
The second reason why the companies will not return to their former identities is because Morris does not own the P&H brand – it pays royalties for its use to its former parent Harnischfeger (which has itself recently filed its own plan to emerge from its own Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection). We may be left with Morris selling P&H cranes in North America – because P&H is the name that the American customers recognise – and an overseas company, ‘Loughborough Newco’ say, selling Morris-branded hoists, and paying an American company royalties for the privilege. It is all getting too confusing!
