The Mastertech, CK and CKE series are the mainstay of Kobelco’s cranes and the BM and BME series are specifically intended for civil engineering and foundation work. Plans have been drawn to develop the new series as their respective successor models. The goal is to develop from scratch next-generation cranes that respond to a wide variety of environmental changes surrounding cranes and to new customer needs arising therefrom.
“The underlying reason for this move was that regulations for exhaust emissions from cranes were tightened in Europe, the United States and Japan in 2011,” said Masato Tanji, who took the initiative in developing the series. On top of efforts to conform to these exhaust emission regulations, in order to incorporate new needs of customers and the times, such as ease of transport and energy-saving measures, drastic reforms were needed.

Prior to the development, they investigated into the customers’ needs carefully. As a result, what they discovered was a greater “change in the environment surrounding transportation in each country” than what they had expected. “In the wake of the tightening of transportation regulations, it was imperative to meet the condition that the width of a crane while transporting should be less than 3 meters,” commented Yoshio Hashimoto of the Overseas Sales Department. This means that the crane width had to be slimmed down by 20 - 40 centimeters in comparison to conventional models.
Furthermore, the weight had to be reduced significantly as well. In order to comply with the world’s most stringent transportation regulations, the weight after a crane is taken apart had to be reduced to approximately 26 tons.
With a number of major hurdles that lay ahead, development kicked off.