With high-rise building developments keeping cranes busy in Dubai, and high oil prices fuelling construction elsewhere in the Middle East, business is booming.

Srini Kadaba, divisional manager of Yusuf Bin Ahmen Kanoo, a Saudi Arabia-based Grove dealer responsible for the sale and service of new mobile cranes in Saudi, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), says the Middle East market is already stretched to the limit with manufacturers struggling to meet demand. For example, he says, Tadano is already quoting 2007 delivery dates, while Grove can’t promise delivery earlier than the final quarter of the year.

Such has been the increase in demand – Kadaba says 35% in the past year for Saudi Arabia – that he reckons older cranes will need to be refurbished and returned to work. He says Saudi Arabia alone will find work for up to 200 more cranes this year.

Saeed Malik, general manager of Al-Suwaidi Equipment and Transport Co. Ltd. (SET), also of Saudi Arabia, agrees. “But,” he says, “the maximum I expect to see is 80 to 100 units.”

Manufacturers just can’t equip the market fast enough. “This,” continues Malik, “is why there could be a complete imbalance even by the third quarter of this year.”

With no expectation of an imminent decline in global oil prices, economic booms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE are likely to continue for the next couple of years.

According to Malik, business will be up by 100% by the end of the year compared with the same period a year earlier.

“We’re already 70% busier than we were in the first quarter of last year,” he says, “and demand will continue to grow.” So much so that he fears a complete imbalance in the market with demand far higher than it can handle.

“We couldn’t see it coming,” Malik confesses. Back in 2004, he remembers discussing the industry with colleagues only to conclude that business would not start to pick up until 2008.

He says the industry is running pillar to post to keep up, but a continuation of current trends will see order backlogs stretch to the ridiculous.

SET is the apex organisation of the Al-Suwaidi Group, working in the heavy lifting businesses of oil and gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, fertilisers, power, desalination, steel, and engineering. These sectors are currently offering up to three-year contracts – far longer than what the market is accustomed to.

Only half the company’s fleet is contracted to jobs under a three-year expected duration. Malik says that has not been the case for at least 10 years.

Rough terrain cranes are traditionally the tool of choice in the Middle East. These compact, rugged lifting machines are ideal for the undulating, sandy ground on which they have to operate. RTs are also faster than other cranes in these conditions. The market is also attracted to the single operating cab, rather than the split operating controls of say an all terrain crane.

50t-80t machines in demand

However, other cranes are also in demand, with 50t to 80t machines across the board much sought after. Malik estimates that up to 70% of cranes operating in the Middle East today are in this bracket.

While a dominant 60% of the cranes currently at work in SET’s fleet are RTs, it also operates a significant crawler crane fleet, all of which are currently being used.

Another company proving that there is a market for smaller capacity crawler cranes is Dubai, UAE-based Cranes and Equipment Ltd.

Allan Good, general manager of the company, oversees a three-fronted business, which operates in crawler crane rentals, used crane sales, and as a dealer for specialist crane manufacturer Comtec from Italy, which manufactures gantry cranes, straddle carriers, portal cranes, and launching girders.

Cranes and Equipment’s crawler crane rental division is in its infancy – entering its second year, its rental fleet sports just four units with lifting capacities from 40t to 200t. Good expects this to expand this year, and is already in negotiations to bring an additional 170t unit, and some Liebherr heavy-duty crawlers to Dubai.

“We anticipate that we will have approximately 90% occupancy among our existing fleet throughout the year,” he says. All available cranes are working at the moment, and Good doesn’t expect any to return within the next three months. “We budgeted to have about 50% utilisation in our first year,” he says. Expectations for the second year have been eclipsed in this hungry market.

Around 60% of the company’s turnover comes from the sale of used machines, mostly to larger construction companies. It acquires lifting equipment from across the globe. Kato and Tadano are the makers of choice in the lower capacity ranges, but Good also secures business through Grove, Demag, and Liebherr.

However, he says, auction houses often provide the market with lower end lifting equipment, which is available through a rental system run throughout Dubai by independent owner-operators.

Lower capacity cranes mounted on trucks will, he adds, typically be hired out like taxis. Small construction contractors who need to lift, say, 2t on a housing development are able to acquire the services of an operator and crane parked up waiting their turn at various unofficial rental locations at the side of the road around the city. Upon completion of the job, the operator will return, park up again, and await the next contract. These cranes often operate with the operator’s phone number displayed across the boom.

Understandably, Good says, bigger international companies won’t entertain this kind of operation on their sites. He adds: “Our cranes come with the proper certification, and have been tested in our workshop before we allow them to attend jobsites.”

Difficult to find idle cranes

Hosam Hashem, a heavy lift engineer at Saudi Arabia-based oil company Saudi Aramco, says it is difficult to find idle cranes when the larger companies are contracting lifting equipment for up to five years. He expects further demand from the new development of the King Abdullah Industrial City in the western region of Saudi Arabia.

“Rental companies,” points out Hashem, “can receive payment for a crane that is still being manufactured, and six months away from delivery.”

Daniele Rigo, export manager of Verona, Italy-based mobile crane manufacturer Autogru Rigo SpA has recently returned from the Middle East having sold 20 units – the largest order his company has received – to UAE-based Al Jaber Heavy Lift and Transport LLC.

Rigo met Al Jaber managing director Kamal Ghais at Samoter 2005 before speaking with plant manager David Wood and general manager Alexander Mullins.

Wood visited the Rigo factory earlier this year where, unsurprisingly, he was interested in the RTs. Rigo was subsequently invited to the Al Jaber facility where the deal took place.

Al Jaber ordered two RT 200 models (25t), one RT 350 (30t), two RT 400 (35t), an RTT 904 (a 100t capacity all-terrain crane), and 14 units of its new RT 500/2. Rigo says the first six of these units are almost ready for delivery.

The new RT 500 has a 35m full power boom. The original had a 30m boom, which was not enough for Al Jaber’s needs. “Therefore,” says Rigo, “we agreed to create a new four-section boom to suit its request.”

The new cranes – designated RT 500/2 – will also have a 16m telescopic extension, spark-arrestor stainless
steel muffler, and air conditioning,
and sport new six in line Euro 3 Iveco NEF type diesel engines developing 230hp at 2,300rpm.