Hitachi to focus on local production

Hitachi Construction Machinery is to place “greater emphasis” on establishing local production facilities as it bids to strengthen its market position, said Hitachi Construction Machinery Europe (HCME) president and chief executive Moriaki Kadoya.

A subsidiary of the Hitachi Group, Hitachi Construction Machinery currently has 33 production sites worldwide – with 16, including its flagship production site near Tokyo, in Japan.

Two new production sites - HCMR in the Tverskaya region of eastern Russia; and Deere-Hitachi in São Paulo, Brazil – are due to be completed before the end of 2013.

“We need to place a greater emphasis on local production to reduce materials and logistics cost, while increasing efficiency of our production facilities,” said Kadoya during the pre bauma event at HCME’S HQ in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

“In the coming fiscal year, we will have 35 production facilities throughout the world – including our factories in Japan. Currently there are two production facilities under construction, in Russia and Brazil, scheduled for completion this year.”

Kadoya said that of Hitachi Group’s YEN 9,665.8 billion revenue in the year to March 31 2012, 10% (US$8.55 billion, YEN 798.7 billion) came from Hitachi Construction Machinery. He claimed the revenue figure makes Hitachi Construction Machinery the third biggest construction machinery manufacturer worldwide, behind Caterpillar and Komatsu.

“In order to meet our objectives to meet our objectives to strengthen our market position we’ve outlined a ten year global strategy which focuses on research and development, global production, sales and service, life cycle support, mining, and global management.”

Outside Japan, Hitachi Construction Machinery has four production facilities in China; three in The Netherlands; three in Indonesia; three in India; two in Spain; one in the United States; and one in Canada.