Stafford rides the storm

In Ireland, and especially the Dublin area, the decline in the construction industry, accompanied by a declining demand for tower cranes, was already visible at the end of 2007. Early in 2008 the property bubble burst. Oversupply of property and the international banking crisis brought Ireland’s huge construction industry to such a sharp halt that Ireland became the first Eurozone nation officially to declare that it had slipped into recession.

Derek Stafford, owner of tower crane rental specialist Stafford Tower Cranes, says that the company responded to the market downturn with three strategic elements: Ireland depot locations, internationalisation, and optimised crane selection for each location.

There are about 150 top slewing tower cranes in operation in Ireland, 60% of which belong to rental companies. The 17-person Ireland operation runs a rental fleet of around 50 cranes out of three depots placed to the southern, northern and western approach roads of Dublin. Its head office is in Donabate, close to Dublin airport. Although Irish and UK government programmes have been hit by lack of finance, Northern Ireland is a different story, following the cessation of hostilities between nationalists and unionists. European Union regional development fund programmes helped create a construction boom in capital city Belfast in 2007, and will continue there until 2013. Thanks to its location just two hours’ drive away, Stafford Tower Cranes is optimistic that it might benefit from any construction work in Northern Ireland. Fast-tracked infrastructure projects where tower cranes are in demand can be expected in the rebuilding programme of old hospitals covered by the country’s £190m health care infrastructure investment programme. In addition, the company has been exporting used Peiner, Liebherr, Wolff and Comansa tower cranes out of Ireland.

For its domestic rental business, Stafford Tower Cranes chooses larger capacity machines above 300tm capacity for the core of its fleet. In September 2007, the first LCL-500 Comansa luffing jib tower crane was imported to Ireland in order to erect a new heater tower in a cement plant in Drogheda, near Dublin. Despite its size, the crane has been designed to be transported easily. All crane parts can be dismantled into less than 11t light units which fit into transport friendly 40-foot containers. The 2.5m x 2.5m mast sections can be dismounted into panels to reduce transport size. During dismantling of the crane, the reeving of the luffing rope remains intact, saving erection time of the upper crane. In addition, an automatic reeving switching system allows the driver to change the crane’s maximum load capacity from 12t to 24t from the cabin. The LCL-500 is equipped with similar frequency controlled 110kW drives for luffing and hoisting.

Through joint efforts by Stafford Tower Cranes and Ukrainian Comansa dealer Rentakran, a similar new LCL 500 has been sold to the Ukrainian Joint venture operation of Irish Cement/CRH.

With the assistance of operation manager Winfried Eamon Scheidges, Stafford is building a global network of contacts to sell secondhand cranes and its rental fleet. Stafford Tower Cranes of America, LLC was founded in 2004, and now runs a fleet of 400tm-500tm capacity Peiner tower cranes out of Arizona and Phoenix. Stafford Tower Cranes of America is using an RFID system to track its 15 cranes and their larger components throughout the USA. Each crane has its own RFID tag tracker in the cabin. All components of the crane in its actual rigged condition show up. It also shows if a component for a desired rigging configuration is missing, and where to obtain it.

The company has also won distribution rights for Linden ­­­Comansa tower cranes in Ireland and Dubai. It has delivered a new Comansa 10LC140 and four other units to the UAE. The company plans that the Dubai operation will provide sales, parts and service support not only for the Gulf, but also for other Middle East and near Asian markets. It has also set up a

joint venture, Baltic Tower Cranes, based in Kleipeda, Lithuania. It is intended that the Baltic operation will eventually service and support the former USSR countries.

Stafford helps cut costs by insisting on containerised transport for all new cranes that it buys, such as the Comansa LCL-500 luffing jib crane, which it claims is currently the largest tower crane in Ireland. The company can get a discount on shipping because of the volume of empty containers returning to Asia after being unloaded in Europe.