The amount of construction taking place in Moscow these days is remarkably impressive. It is possibly second only to Dubai as a world construction hot-spot. On the back of political stability and seven years of economic growth averaging more than 6.6% a year, businesses in Russia are prospering and real estate is in short supply.
To help meet the shortfall, an entire new business district just 4km northwest of the Kremlin is under construction. From 2010 it is planned that this will be the main centre of business and government for Russia’s capital city.
The flagship of this development is the Federation Tower, set to become Europe’s tallest skyscraper when it officially opens in 2008. This building will reach 93 storeys and 354m in height. It shares a podium with another skyscraper, the Tower of Russia, which will reach 62 storeys and 260m. The highest point of the development will be a 448m spire.
Construction of the $530m complex began in February 2005. Potain, Krøll and Liebherr vied for the tower crane supply contract from developer Mirax Group. Liebherr won and has supplied five self-climbing 160 HC-L luffing jib cranes to Mirax. The project features lift shafts with a relatively narrow cross section of 2.6m. The HC-L cranes have a 1.9m internal climbing cross-section so they can be climbed upwards as the building progresses. The 160 HC-Ls can lift a maximum load of 16t and can lift 2t out to a radius of 55m.
Providing crane services to Mirax on this project is UVN Technika, a privately owned company that is one of Moscow’s leading crane rental companies. While Mirax owns the cranes, UVN Technika supplies operators and carries out the erection and climbing. “Internal climbing is a brand new topic for the Russian market,” says owner and managing director Pavel Butning.
Butning says that demand is so great for cranes in Moscow at the moment that the only restricting factor is what financing he can get to buy more cranes.
“Our market has been experiencing a growing demand for mobile and tower cranes in recent years. I would say that, as UVN Technika is already a well known brand here in Moscow, we are able to take as many jobs as we want.”
UVN Technika partners with Liebherr and the favourable terms it receives, Butning says, has enabled him to order 16 more tower cranes for delivery during August to October. This will grow his tower fleet from 24 units to 40. The new cranes are in the 10t to 12t maximum capacity range: eight of the 180 ECH10 model, five of the 200 EC-HM12 Fr-tronic and three of the 245 EC-HM12 Fr-tronic. They are all earmarked for future jobs already.
Butning says that Moscow requires such large cranes for two reasons: large formwork and pre-cast elements are commonly used; and there is often a lack of space on urban sites for erection and dismantling, so a single large crane with a long jib that can serve an entire site is preferred to two or three smaller ones.
UVN Technika also runs a small fleet of mobile cranes, which are exclusively Liebherr all terrains. As well as using them to erect its own tower cranes, UVN Technika also carries out work for companies that are developing cellular telephone networks and need antenna towers erecting. “We are also involved in industrial modernisation and building projects,” says Butning, “such as power plants, breweries and Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola plants. We even plant the trees at fancy cottages, where a smaller crane would destroy the lawn, and help to make movies for 3T studios of Nikita Mikhalkov [the Russian Spielberg, according to the Internet Movie Database].”
UVN Technika was on hand to help with the filming of the huge military parade held in Red Square last year to mark the 60th anniversary of the Russian/Allies victory in World War II. Butning explains that an LTM 1060/1 lifted an operator in a man-basket, while an LTM 1250/1 and an LTM 1120/1 held up a wire rope, along which a camera was suspended to get panoramic shots.
UVN Technika purchased an LTM 1150.5 in 2005 and has ordered a new LTM 1100.4 and a used LTM1300/1, for delivery this November. These will take the fleet up to a total of eight units.
Butning says that the 300 tonner will have “a lot to do in erecting tower cranes in difficult conditions plus bridge building on the new Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway project, and perhaps in the new Volkswagen plant project near the town of Kaluga.”
Butning says that development of the crane rental industry in Russia is largely being driven by the manufacturers. Although there are many life-expired 20- and 30-year-old western European tower cranes available in Russia, regulations prevent their use in Moscow and “soon it will be the same in the whole of Russia.” Although 80% of Russia’s cranes are locally made, the contractors and the growing number of rental companies are increasingly looking to foreign manufacturers to replace their oldest models.
As well as Liebherr, through UVN Technika, Potain is also well represented in Russia, through Kramax and Rentakran. Rentakran is Moscow’s largest tower crane rental company. It was founded in 1996 from the ashes of Finnish company Pekkaniska’s retreat from Moscow back west to St Petersburg. (Pavel Butning used to work for Rentakran before setting up in competition in 1998.)
By 2004 Rentakran owned 52 tower cranes. Today it has roughly double that number, and 90% of them are from Potain. Like UVN Technika, it is a central strategy of Rentakran to have the most modern fleet it can.
With such constant high demand for lifting equipment, there has never been a better time to be in the crane business, says Yury Sviridov, Rentakran’s deputy general director.
“The construction climate in Moscow is doing very well, and Rentakran works for this market predominantly,” he says. “We tend to lease our machines 50% of the time to foreign construction companies, and the other 50% to local construction companies. Potain tower cranes are arriving on new jobsites all the time.”
Rentakran’s fleet includes a wide range of Potain models from smaller self-erectors for house-building projects up to large top-slewers like the MD 265. Among its most recent purchases are MD 208 units with a 10t maximum capacity and MC 85 city-class cranes, which have a 5t maximum capacity.
Manitowoc Crane Group, Potain’s parent company, opened an office in Moscow in 2002 to cover not just the 17 million square kilometres of Russia but also neighbouring Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Manitowoc Crane Group’s general sales director for the region, Natalia Kutkovich, says: “Our short to mid-term main objective is to secure representation across all of Russia and the CIS’s major cities and surrounding areas. It is also part of our plan to have distributors in all key economic zones. Our long-term objective is to secure a market-leadership position in the Russian and CIS markets. Russia has huge potential and we think it will become one of the most important crane markets in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.”
Spanish manufacturer Comansa began marketing its cranes in Moscow just last year with the rental and sales company Remex and by December it had delivered 10 cranes. This year it has been delivering an average of four units a month, Comansa export manager Juan Maria Iturrarte says.
Butning says that Russian tower crane manufacturing is improving, but it is still not even at a level of what Liebherr and Potain were producing 20 years ago. The best new Russian cranes compare in price to a used foreign one, which is likely to be preferred. Chinese and Korean cranes are also starting to be promoted in Russia, but Butning thinks that the Moscow market is now too international and advanced for them.
The market in Moscow is as closely regulated as any major city in the world. Data recorders (or ‘black boxes’) are mandatory and there must be a working zone limiting system to control the path of the hook when working over schools, roads, railways, and similar sensitive areas,
SMIE, the French company that specialises in anti-collision and zoning systems, has been a beneficiary of this requirement and is represented in Russia by both UVN Technika and Remex.
Russia’s mobile crane manufacturing is dominated by Avtokran Joint Stock Company based in Ivanova, which sells under the Ivanovets brand.
Avtokran had a bumper year in 2005, producing 1,814 Ivanovets truck cranes, a 16.5% rise on the 1,557 it produced in 2004 and more than double the 818 units that it produced in 2000, the year after it was rescued from near-bankruptcy by new owners.
The growth has continued into 2006, with first quarter figures showing a year-on-year rise of 18.5% in the most popular 25t capacity category, and strong growth too in the 30t and 50t categories.
Avtokran is not only Russia’s largest producer of truck cranes, but also the main producer of slew rings. The plant produces slew rings from 600mm to 3m diameter, not only for its own use but also for external sales to equipment manufacturers across Europe. It manufactured 3,369 slewing rings in 2005, up 10% on 2004.
While Avtokran truck cranes are clearly in strong demand in Russia in capacities up to 50t, it has so far failed to make the breakthrough at the higher end. Two years ago, at Moscow’s CTT construction machinery fair, Avtokran showed the prototype of a new 100t capacity all terrain, designed by former Liebherr design chief Horst Zimmerman (CT July 2004, pp24-25). That model, the KC-8973, was still at prototype stage at this year’s CTT in April.
For mobile cranes above 50t, Russia continues to look to foreign manufacturers. Grove mobile cranes are popular, especially all-terrain models GMK 5100 and GMK 3055 which are finding plenty of work in the oil and gas industries, as well as in general construction.
Russia’s first Tadano Faun all terrain has also been in demand on sites across Moscow. The 110t capacity ATF 110G-5 was delivered to dealer Techstroycontract in May 2005, since when it has been operated by its rental subsidiary Ecorad.
The dealership was established in December 2004 and by April 2005 Tadano had secured the necessary certificates of compliance with Russian technical regulations for three ATF models: ATF 80-4, ATF 110G-5 and ATF 160G-5.
Sergei Bobkov of Tadano says that the ATF 110G-5 has attracted a lot of attention: “The objective is to get Russian customers familiar with Tadano products and let them try our cranes in action. The Russian market is extremely conservative and penetration of new brands is slow, but the machine is doing its job well and we are confident that this strategy will see us advance in the Russian market.”
The potential of Russia has also attracted the attention of foreign manufacturers of knuckle boom loader cranes. Italy’s Effer, for example, has exhibited at CTT for the last three years and towards the end of 2005 began making sales.
Since that time it has taken 25 orders – not huge, says export manager Giancarlo Manzano, but a “quite satisfactory” start. Models sold have been in the 4tm to 8tm range, including models 42, 62 and 75. Fellow Italian loader crane manufacturer Fassi’s first exhibition at CTT included its 11tm-class F110A.22 loader crane on a Kamatz truck.
Manzano of Effer says that although the Russian made-products are “good quality”, he believes the lighter weight and much longer reach of western European cranes, particularly with fly jibs, will see them increase their market share.
“A growing number of Russian customers will catch on during the coming years,” Manzano says.