Manitowoc Opens Plant in Portugal

Manitowoc celebrated the opening of its latest facility with an open house for hundreds of customers, dealers, senior company management and local government officials. The company’s newest manufacturing plant is located in Baltar, Portugal, and will operate in addition to the company’s existing plant in nearby Fanzeres for the manufacture of Potain tower cranes.

“We are extremely proud to open this new facility and strengthen our presence in the important Iberica market,” said Glen Tellock, CEO of The Manitowoc Co. “Two of our core goals are to achieve manufacturing excellence and differentiate ourselves through customer proximity. That means establishing premium manufacturing processes and providing close and dedicated sales and service support. You will find both here at Baltar.

“Our core value of continuous innovation has resulted in three new models being produced in Portugal these past three years. That has caused to an upsurge in demand and we are adjusting our manufacturing capability accordingly. We have also invested heavily in customer service and sales provision to ensure we have the on-the-ground support our customers deserve.”

The Baltar plant, working with the Fanzeres factory, will produce Potain’s MC, MCT and MDT ranges. Operations at the two facilities are split into upstream and downstream functions. The upstream operations — the majority of cutting and welding — will take place at Baltar. The downstream operations — the painting, assembly, testing and shipping — will take place at Fanzeres. This split enables Manitowoc to further improve quality as both areas of production require different skills, levels of cleanliness, flow management and technology.

Manitowoc Crane CARE forms a large part of the Baltar plant’s activities and it will be a major distribution point for spare parts as well as EMEA’s Center of Excellence for the EnCORE program for repair and refurbishment.