Steady and stable might describe much of the Scandinavian market but positive exceptions include Swedish tower crane rental rates, up by as much as 50%. Finland is showing the strongest signs of growth overall. And there are high hopes for Malmö and Copenhagen when the Øresund bridge linking Sweden and Denmark is opened next year. Another bridge project, the Femern Link, to connect Denmark and Germany will also need cranes. Copenhagen is to get an urban rail network and the city is “almost one big building site” according to Peter Lundsbjerg, Mannesmann Dematic’s sales manager in Denmark. He projects that demand for cranes this year will be similar to last but that the next two or three years will show “quite a steady increase”.
Construction activity in Sweden has been low for most of the 1990s, perhaps the lowest for 50 years according to Christer Dijner, managing director of Kato and Marchetti dealer AB Kranlyft. Having picked up slightly in the last two years, further improvement is expected by about October because consultants are busy now. Projects needing cranes will be mainly private sector apartment blocks and offices. Government projects are mainly for new roads, in and around larger cities, with little need for cranes. A lot of state housing was built in the 1980s and is still in very good condition and the government is also trying to save money. Having already recently used construction to stimulate the economy, Sweden has only limited demand for further new infrastructure.
For what construction work there is, as in many other parts of the world, there is a trend towards using precast concrete panels in new buildings for which tower cranes of 300tm and above are required. There is a shortfall of these large cranes but a surplus of 100tm models lying idle in rental yards, according to Prokrania’s managing director Leif Loftmyr, rather like in Germany as reported in the June issue of Cranes Today. To some extent larger tower cranes could mean business for larger mobiles to erect them. Loftmyr has sold two large Linden Comansa tower cranes in Sweden this year and reckons that all 30-odd of the Series 8000 Linden flat top towers in the country are in constant use. Another view is that reduced construction time and the predominance of low rise buildings justifies a mobile crane instead of a tower.
Lower consumption
An important consideration in Sweden, where electricity is very expensive, when compared with the USA for example, is a crane’s power consumption. An old 300tm electric tower crane can use $250-worth of electricity per day, effectively doubling the crane’s daily cost. A new crane such as the Linden Comansa 2000 Series with frequency controlled functions can consume as little as half as much, Loftmyr claims.
He reckons that across Scandinavia tower crane rental rates have gone up by between 30% and 50% in the last year (although they had fallen dramatically before that). Rates in the mobile crane market have recovered more quickly than tower cranes, mainly because they had fallen less beforehand.
Norway and Denmark’s Liebherr dealer, Hans Oen, reports sales in Norway so far this year of four 80t and one 90t all-terrain crabe, with perhaps a 50 tonner and a couple of 30 tonners expected to bring the year’s total to about eight units. This would be a similar figure to last year and Oen says that it represents between about 15% and 20% of Norway’s AT crane market.
Last year a relative boom in mobile crane sales in Norway at 40 units was much higher than the usually similarly sized Swedish market (about 25 units last year), according to AB Kranlyft’s Dijner. He expects this year’s total for Norway to be down to between 20 and 25 units with Sweden about five units higher.
Happy with last year’s performance in Norway, Oen also says things are slowing down there slightly, with less activity in the mobile market where for the last three or four years rental companies have been buying cranes. This is attributed to completion of a large hospital project and the Gardermoen airport, and the fall in oil prices means fewer oil rigs are being built – a major source of business for mobile crane rental companies in Norway. High interest rates and an unstable government have created a feeling of uncertainty and a reluctance to invest. However, there is work on government infrastructure projects such as gas terminals and many houses will need to be rebuilt in the near future. Development of Oslo’s old airport site is also expected to bring in good business.
Restrictive regulations
Norway’s restrictive road travel regulations are a particular problem that affect all-terrain cranes more than truck cranes because limits are determined using wheelbase measurements. This is not in line with the load per axle method used in neighbouring countries. For the distance between the front and rear axles on a 60t all-terrain crane, regulations allow a total weight of between 30t and 33t. This equates to less than 9t per axle compared with the 12t allowed in the European Union. Therefore a dolly is required which, with the increased wheelbase, brings the allowable total weight up to 60t but adds as much as NKr250,000 ($31,500) to the price, Oen says.
These restrictions have allowed truck cranes to remain dominant with a relatively late challenge now coming from all-terrain cranes. The premium on rental rates for all-terrain cranes over truck cranes can still be so small that it is difficult to justify the extra cost incurred to comply with the road travel regulations. However, Hans Oen says that the most requested rental cranes at the moment are 60t or 70t all-terrains and he expects that Tadano Faun’s ATF 60-4 has the largest share of this market. Liebherr’s new LTM 1060/2 won’t be available until late this year or early next. In Sweden Christer Dijner finds similar popularity of this size of AT and will be importing Marchetti’s 70 tonner later in the year.
Further rises in the popularity of all-terrain cranes in Norway can be expected if proposed changes to regulations come in next year. On the way for about 10 years now, the new regulations would include a 12t per axle load limit and be more in line with the rest of Europe.
Rental rates in Norway for larger cranes are said to be reasonable at the moment but 25t to 30t cranes are losing money. These smaller cranes cannot just be sold off though – they are needed as service cranes for the large ones. One Swedish rental company, GMK AB, has achieved a 5% rate increase since 1996 and is busy in the petroleum industry. Sticking to a small operating area, GMK runs a fleet of nine Kato ATs between 25t and 80t, a 10t Marchetti and a fleet of 15 Snorkel aerial platforms. The general feeling in both Norway and Sweden is that mobile crane utilisation rates are up, but not by enough to justify buying new cranes.
Market reduction
Hans Oen is also Liebherr’s dealer for Denmark. In 1997 he claimed 70% of Denmark’s annual AT sales. Today, he says the market is “small and stable”, similar in size to Norway. He sold about 10 units last year and expects about the same for 1999. Different road regulations mean ATs are more popular in Denmark than truck cranes or RTs. AB Kranlyft claims about 50% of Sweden’s mobile crane market for Kato, with Tadano and Demag second and Liebherr close behind. Despite increases in GNP since last year it says that small sales volumes still mean Sweden is a buyers market. Volume, such as it is, comes in the 25t to 50t range. For AB Kranlyft this means the Kato CR 250, and the smaller CR 100 has also been well received. The company has recently sold a Marchetti Trio to Finland and hopes to complete a deal on one to Denmark which will mean at least one in each Scandinavian country.
The Trio, which has been uprated to a maximum capacity of 12t, competes to some extent with the 10t-capacity CR 100 but there are distinct differences. The CR 100 has a longer boom and the Trio can be used as either a crane, with forks, or as an aerial platform. This latter option is popular in Scandinavia because access equipment and cranes have been accepted as going together since the 1970s, unlike in the UK for example. Demag says its three-axle, 40t city crane, the AC 40-1 is particularly popular because of its compact size.
As for larger ATs, Demag expects great things from the 80t AC 80-1 and the forthcoming five-axle AC 100. The standard AC 100, with a 50.2m main boom and 17m extension, will be within 12t per axle, including hook block and 16t of counterweight.
AB Kranlyft has sold two Kato KA 900s in Norway to Mykklebust. Though Mitsubishi components remain popular, Volvo’s cabs and engines on this model should be particularly well received in Scandinavia and the two manufacturers are linked anyway. With a turnover of around $15m, Finland’s Pekkaniska Oy, one of Scandinavia’s largest lifting equipment rental companies, continues to renew its crane and access fleet. Latest crane is a 500t Liebherr LTM 1500 with 60m boom and 90m lattice jib.
Pekkaniska has susidiaries in St Petersburg, Tallin in Estonia, Riga in Latvia and representation in Moscow. Like many Finnish companies already affected by recession in their home market, Pekkaniska also suffered from the economic collapse of Russia in 1991. During the best years 20% of Finland’s foreign trade was with Russia. On the whole Pekkaniska survived by supplying the growing demand for rental cranes on construction projects run by western contractors in Russia. Finland’s construction industry recovered in 1996, since when growth has been remarkable and expectations for the next year are still good, according to Pekkaniska.
Across Scandinavia the market for large crawler cranes is very flat. In Norway, for example, there are perhaps only 10 units currently at work. An increase in the number of wind farm projects throughout Scandinavia, particularly in Norway and Denmark, should change this. Long boom crawlers, of around 400t capacity, are used for this type of work which involves high lifts at short radii. In Denmark Liebherr has already sold one 400t crawler but it is due to start work this month on a wind farm in Northern Germany.
Loading up imports
Despite a strong presence of indigenous loader crane manufacturers – notably Hiab of Sweden and HMF of Denmark – Palfinger sold more than 800 loader cranes across the region in 1998, an increase of 15% over the previous year. A further rise of between 5% and 10% is expected this year and next. Franz Thaller, Palfinger’s area manager, says models between 16tm and 48tm are selling well in Scandinavia, mainly mounted on 3-axle trucks.
A network of four dealers and one subsidiary in Scandinavia has accounted for sales of nearly 150 Effer cranes in 1998, up 27% on the 1997 figure. Scandinavia is an increasingly important market for Effer, accounting for 15% of its total world turnover. Specialising in large truck mounted loader cranes, Effer says these are its best sellers in the region. About 16 units of the 105tm model 1150 were sold in Denmark last year, either the long-boom version with eight extensions or with six extensions and fly jib. Slightly smaller, the 90tm 920 series, also sold well with five units going to Finland. Effer says its new model, the 2200, exhibited in Denmark in March, is encroaching on telescopic crane territory. Two units of “the only 200tm articulating crane on the market” have already been sold in Denmark.
Autogru PM of Italy reports sales of 40 units in Norway and Denmark last year, twice the number sold in 1997, and it hopes to increase this to 60 or 80 units a year, now that it is better represented there. PM says that its medium and large models of between 17tm and 43tm, are the most suitable for Scandinavia. The company adds: “We are pretty sure that the 38tm, a forthcoming model, will represent a success, filling the gap we have at the moment between 32tm and 43tm.”
