Hitachi to export mini excavators to holland

BEKASI, West Java (JP): PT Hitachi Construction Machinery Indonesia, a Japanese-Indonesian joint venture producing hydraulic excavators, plans to manufacture other heavy equipment and expand marketing to Europe, company executives said.

"We will export 1,200 mini excavators worth US$960,000 to the Netherlands next year," the firm's president Rustam Effendi told The Jakarta Post at a reception here Saturday to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

He said the company will also diversify its production to bulldozers and wheel-loaders with an additional investment of $25 million.

Rustam said his company still has 10 hectares of idle land in the Bekasi district of Cibitung, which can be used for the expansion.

Hitachi Construction Machinery Indonesia, which started producing excavators in 1991, currently has two plant sites, in Rawapasung and Cibitung, both in Bekasi regency.

The Rawapasung factory produces excavator components, crane girders, filter houses for power plants, belt conveyors for cement factories, tank transformers and pressure vessels.

The Cibitung plant assembles excavators.

The firm's shares are 65 percent jointly owned by two Japanese companies -- Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. and Itochu Corporation -- and 35 percent by Indonesian partners - PT Murinda Iron Steel, PT Hexindo Adiperkasa and PT Anggaputra Dhananjaya.

Murinda was the pioneer of the joint venture. It had been a local producer and exporter of mobile cranes to the United States since the 1980s.

A director of Hitachi Construction Machinery Indonesia, Gunawan Setiadi, told the Post that Hitachi Construction Machinery and Itochu joined up with Murinda Iron Steel in 1990.

Gunawan said that the joint venture currently produces 700 excavators and 5,400 tons of excavator components per annum, most of which are sold domestically. The remainder is exported to Japan, Malaysia and Thailand.

Local demand for excavators is about 2,400 units per year, he said.

"I estimate that the local demand for excavators will increase to 5,000 units per year by 2,003," said Gunawan.

He said Hitachi Construction Machinery Indonesia and two other construction excavator producers, PT Trakindo Utama and PT United Tractors, supply 90 percent of the local demand. The other 10 percent of the demand is met by imports from South Korea.

"We expect to increase our excavator exports to Malaysia and Thailand to 48 units this year from 32 in 1995," Gunawan said, adding that his company's exports of excavator components to Japan amount to around 2,000 tons per year.

Gunawan acknowledged that 50 percent of the main components for his company's production are imported from South Korea, India, Italy and the Philippines.

He said imports of excavator components are subject to duties of 20 to 30 percent. (kod)