Japanese steel and machinery group Kobelco has published its half-year results for the period to the end of September. Sadly it no longer reports the crane performance separately, since the crane division was merged with the construction equipment business.

The division achieved 20 percent growth in revenues to ¥194 Billion ($1.7 billion), although the company says that crawler crane sales decreased, mainly in North America due to engine certification problems. Fortunately, the decline was more than offset by higher excavator sales in Southeast Asia and Europe. The business did manage to almost double its pre-tax profits though to ¥8.4 billion ($74 million).