Manitowoc on the move

Manitowoc has started to merge parts of its Grove mobile and Potain tower crane businesses in europe, following similar moves in the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions. While the two crane lines will remain independent in terms of operations and product management, they both now share a new leader in Orlando Mota - senior vice president europe & Africa - responsible for sales, marketing and support in europe and some African countries. Other senior appointments include global product managers christophe Simoncelli for tower cranes, Giorgio Angelino for All Terrain cranes and Jean-noel Gros for finance and administration. c&A editor Mark Darwin spoke with Orlando Mota about his plans.

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Orlando Mota, 42, graduated from the university of Minho/ Portugal in 2002 with an MSc in Mechanical engineering. He kicked off his career as operations manager at mining and earthmoving company Mibal, joining Manitowoc in 2004 as a parts and service manager and was then promoted to managing director of Manitowoc iberica. in 2016 he was appointed Mediterranean area director, and then vice president tower crane sales for europe & Africa. in January mobile cranes were added to his regional responsibilities covering all the customer facing aspects for the Grove and Potain brands. During his time with the company he has been in charge of sales operations, after-sales, support, development, marketing and distribution networks for an increasingly wide area.

“My main aim is to maintain investment in new products and technologies while keeping an eye out for opportunities to enlarge our market coverage,” says Mota. “To do that, we are paying close attention to the voice of our customers, which is crucial to meet market needs.”

The Grove All Terrain product line currently ranges from the new 50 tonne GMK1050-2 to the aging 450 tonne GMK7450.

“We are currently working on a smaller two-axle 40 tonne crane either an AT or City-type crane. It is a niche market and one which we expected to disappear a few years ago - but it hasn’t. There is however increasing pressure for this size of crane to be cost-effective and our engineering group is working hard to achieve this. It is still early days as we are not planning to introduce the new model for another year to 18 months.”