If you stand anywhere on Madrid’s two ring roads today and look around, you are bound to see construction. Apartments, retail complexes, offices and light industry are rising all around. New roads are railway lines are also under construction.
All of which means cranes and lots of them, thousands in fact. In one single location visited by Cranes Today recently it was possible to count 183 tower cranes, without climbing to a high point. Gain some extra height by climbing one of them and nearly 300 cranes are visible.
‘Not all of these cranes are new.’ concedes Christopher Dawe, export manager for Comansa, one of Spain’s major manufacturers of tower cranes. He can spot some models he was selling 25 years ago, he says, which smaller contractors keep in use. ‘They count on the makers to keep making spares even in the slower market periods,’ says Dawe, and he says doing so is a point Comansa on which prides itself.
But recently the market has been booming, and domestic sales account for a large part of the sales of Comansa’s distinctive flat top cranes. Another Spanish manufacturer, Jaso Equipos de Obras y Construcciones, which claims to be largest supplier in the Spanish market, sells approximately 700 cranes a year in Spain, which represents the majority of its output.
‘Look for the ecological cranes,’ jokes Jaso’s export manager Mikel Iturrioz. ‘They are green and blend in.’ There are plenty of green Jaso cranes to be seen, which Iturrioz says is quite a switch from the past decade when be far the largest part of the Jaso output went abroad, particularly to the Middle and Far East. The rise of the Spanish market has filled in for the drop in demand in those regions.
Germany’s Liebherr, which has also been a significant player in Spain since the early 1990s when it acquired Imenasa Gruas, also finds the market busy and says that around 64% of its Spanish output of 610 cranes was sold in Spain in 2001. The cranes are made at the Pamplona works of Liebherr Industrias Metalicas (LIM).
These sales are not the full story for Liebherr, because as well as making bottom slewing cranes and smaller top slewing models up to 100tm capacity at LIM, it also imports a few larger construction cranes from the Biberach works in Germany.
The fourth major player in the tower crane market in Spain is Potain. Spain is mainly a market for city cranes and smaller site cranes, Potain says. Larger construction sites and the bigger high rise projects visible in other European countries are more rare in Spain. Jaso concurs: ‘We could say that the 45m jib and a tip load of 1t, with a maximum load of 2.5t, is a typical model for the market,’ says Iturrioz.
According to statistics from Liebherr, Spain’s construction growth has been strongly outpacing a more steady growth in the rest of the country’s economy, which itself has been different from the rest of Europe, now sliding towards stagnation. Spain’s GDP rise was 2.8% in 2001 and just about 2% in 2002 with more growth likely this year. Corresponding figures for construction were 5.5% in 2001 and about 4% last year.
House building, for example, has reflected the general economic growth in Spain, which perhaps has been ‘catching up’ with Europe generally after a different pace of development during the Franco years. It has been particularly strong in Madrid, which has expanded greatly in the 1990s and in which a major part of the whole economy is focused.
Low interest rates have contributed to growth, says LIM general manager Michael Hörmann, and also an influx of overseas money into the holiday coastlines where hotels, apartments and retirement homes have been a busy sector.
All of which has meant strong sales of tower cranes. Exact figures are difficult to pin down but Jaso estimates the market at just under 2,500 units last year, claiming about 700 of those for itself. Potain says it has an 18 % market share and Liebherr says it has a share of about 20% in the markets in which it competes.
Comansa, now known as Linden-Comansa for export purposes, remains a private company and does not reveal exact figures, says Dawe. But he says the company has averaged between 400 and 600 units over the last 20 years and considers that it will keep this kind of share. He says the firm tends to produce for the larger end of the Spanish market.
However, Spanish manufacturers are also working hard to find and rediscover export opportunities. While there is no mention yet of deflation, the expectations of the main players are growing more cautious no one expects sales to continue at the quite same rate. Housing particularly, which is a key sector for all tower crane producers, is thought to be due for a slowdown. As in many countries, apartment prices have been soaring over the last few years and anecdotally at least, no one in Madrid believes it can continue. Whether a price crash will follow is harder to say. But perhaps as the British pound loses strength against the euro and the German economy becomes ever more sluggish the holiday and retirement market may ease, for the Brits and the Germans have led the charge towards the Spanish sun over the past decade or two. Enlargement of the European Union could impact too because infrastructure funds which have flowed into Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece may now be channelled eastwards.
For the future Comansa has turned its attention to the US market, which it believes has high potential, though currently it is not as strong as it would hope. The firm is taking advantage of its Swedish flat top technology, gained through the acquisisition of Linden Alimak in the early 1980s.
‘Linden-Alimak had made a strong drive into the US in the 1970s with both the flat top technology and a modular concept of crane,’ Dawe says, and there is a legacy to build on. Following the Asian cutbacks Comansa has been pushing to sell in the USA.
‘Although the market is not as strong as could be hoped, it is making progress,’ he adds. Last year a new company, Linden Comansa America (LCA) was formed with Heede South East Inc, a firm based in North Carolina. Heede had built up significant experience with the original Linden cranes.
Jaso too has its eyes on the USA as a possible future market, says Iturrioz. For this and some other export markets, bigger models are more important, he says. ‘In Spain, and in South America where we also sell, the concrete bucket, weighing 2.5t at most, is the main tool. But elsewhere precast units or steel beams are more important, with weights of 8t or 12t.’
Jaso has been developing bigger models such as its J 600 with an 80m jib, a 4.4t tip load and a 20t maximum load. It is also producing more luffing jib types with an eye on markets like the UK.
Iturrioz says that the recent drop in the value of the dollar, and relative rise therefore in euro prices has made life more difficult. Even so the US market is a big one and the company is paying close attention to it.
Liebherr already has a range of large cranes sold out of Germany. But it has been looking to attack the Spanish market more strongly with new models such as its H crane series of hydraulic self-erectors. One of the newest is the 13Hm which has an integral high speed two-axle undercarriage to give it additional mobility, aided by the capacity to move with ballast in position. Liebherr says the model is aimed at craft trade companies who move rapidly from site to site. It lifts 1.2t at 20m jib end.
Liebherr has also been tackling the market with a series of top slewing cranes the EL built from LC, EC or HC systems. They can be delivered with optional modern electronics as extras or as more basic models, and emphasise price in a market where the basic unit can make good headway.
Potain supplies the market with a variety of Portugese, French and Italian made models, again in the small and medium range. But its most notable input recently has been a very large crane, a huge MD 900 to the contractor building the new Line Nine metro project in Barcelona, which has just started tunnelling (see panel below).
