In last year’s bauma China show, we had a chance to have a chat with Heiko Kurz, Vice Director of Lifting Department, Thiele GmbH & Co. KG, the Chain manufacturer from Germany, to learn about the company’s latest development.
Heiko Kurz, Vice Director of Lifting Department from Thiele, is introducing the their high performance chain components
LRW: Please tell us something new at Thiele.
Heiko Kurz: We are trying to strengthen our customer base in China. We have set up distribution partnership with Jian Feng. For the lifting equipment side of our business, it worked really well for both of the companies, we have a lot of success with the sales over this year.
In January, we expanded our product lines to include bigger sizes of Grade 100 chains. We can now produce 26mm to 32mm Grade 100 chains. This new quality weighs 30% less than its predecessor while providing an increased load capacity of 25% with the same nominal size.
And we increase our sizes on the fittings, like sling hooks, self-locking hooks, same as the master links up to 25mm.
Besides these, we continue to expand our product line on lifting points. We introduce the new welded-type Lashing Point TWN 1880, which has fixed positioning and noise damped spring. These features certainly have advantages on many applications. The small size of the TWN 1880 lashing point was at the focus during the development of this weld-on lashing point. It can be swiveled by 180°. The high working load limit/lashing capacity when compared with its compact design is what makes the lashing point something special.
LRW: The market for offshore is going down, how does it affect Thiele?
Heiko Kurz: Not surprisingly, the market is slowing down at the moment. We see a general situation that the raw materials prices are very low, which have affected the mining and offshore oil and gas exploration. We certainly see this, meanwhile, we are able to level up the slow business on this side with more applications on the construction and industrial sides. We are trying to increase our presence in different markets. And we see the situation is getting better in the last few weeks, and we hope this will continue in the way that the natural resources industry will improve in the next year.
