Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) signs to allow the Korean company, SPP Machine Tech, to produce & market its cranes.
The deck cranes to be licensed are two models, currently on the market, having a 36-ton hoisting capacity and a working radius of up to 26 and 28 meters, respectively. MHI will supply components for the cranes, including hydraulic machinery, to SPP Machine Tech.
With this initiative, MHI aims at accelerating market penetration of MHI technology-based marine deck cranes in Korea.
Before this, MHI licensed the technology to Jiangsu Masada Heavy Industries Co, Ltd. in China, in 2008. Through licensing to these two major shipbuilding nations, MHI looks to further expand its share in the global deck crane market.
MHI presently enjoys the largest share, 40%, of the Japanese market. For some time the company has been looking for a way to effectively penetrate into Korea's huge shipbuilding market. Meanwhile SPP Machine Tech, which had been licensed from a European manufacturer, was seeking to enhance its deck crane portfolio through the addition of more competitive machines by switching to technology licensing from MHI. The intentions of the two companies thus meshed and led to the conclusion of the licensing agreement.
SPP Machine Tech was established in 1988 as an affiliate of SPP Group, a major shipbuilding and marine machinery company in Korea. Besides deck cranes, which account for roughly half of total sales, SPP Machine Tech manufactures land-use goliath gantry cranes, marine boilers, rudders and other products.