After Tremonti

In recent years Italy’s crane market has been quite healthy, with sales of new machines running at levels higher than most of the rest of Europe. The government’s ‘Tremonti bis’ law gave firms tax breaks when purchasing new equipment. Now, one year after the end of ‘Tremonti bis’, the crane market seems to be on the turn.

While tower crane manufacturers are reporting another stable year, the wheeled mobile crane market appears to be in decline, according to several manufacturers.

Wheeled mobile cranes
After three or four high-earning years, the Italian market for mobile cranes appears to have slowed down. ‘Big job sites are running but I think that companies have already bought the cranes they need,’ says Locatelli export manager Maria Mortarino. Of Locatelli’s performance in 2003, she says: ‘The first six months of the year were pretty good but after the summer holidays the market became much quieter.’ She adds: ‘We are not very optimistic about next year.’

Liebherr Italia salesman Davide Vidali agrees: ‘We have had a good market in the last three to four years but this year the market is not so good, in my opinion.’ Still, Liebherr had sold 40 new and 30 used cranes in Italy by the end of October.

Macchine Industriali Maia, the Terex Bendini dealer for southern Italy, is also cautious about next year, despite a good 2003, with sales up 20% in the first 10 months to 58 units. ‘There are a lot of jobs in high-speed railway works,’ explains sales manager Attilio Bruni. But these cranes are not all intended for the Italian market and 15 of the cranes it sold in 2003 went to Italian contractors for working on overseas projects. And despite the success this year, it has committed to ordering only 30 units from Bendini next year. ‘If the beginning of the year is good,we will order more,’ says Bruni.

Tadano Faun sold about 25 cranes in Italy this year, according to Italian sales manager Paul Brown. Sales picked up in the last couple of months , after it introduced the 60t, three-axle ATF 60-3 on the Italian market at the SAIE fair in Bologna. This all-terrain model was first shown at Intermat in Paris in May.

Also at SAIE was Grove’s RT 530E, a three-year-old 30t rough terrain model making its debut in Italy. Grove sold about 60 cranes in 2003 – a satisfactory performance – but the market softened by 20% toward the end of the year, the company reckons. Highlight of Grove’s year was the sale of a 450t GMK 7450 all-terrain with MegaWingLift to heaylift specialist Runco.

As reported last month, Rigo has brought out a 65t four-axle AT, the RTT 654. Its three-axle 60t RTT 603 is being discontinued because, says export manager Daniele Rigo, it is increasingly difficult for two- and three-axle truck cranes to compete against the larger knuckle boom loader cranes.

With sales of about a dozen units, Rigo says 2003 was a poor year. ‘There’s a recession. There are no jobs for 3,000 cranes like there used to be,’ he says, adding that he does not see any signs of recovery at least before June 2004.

Marchetti also reports tough sales conditions. ‘In general, the situation is very calm, at least for us,’ says export director Marcello Maestri, adding that 2003 was the toughest year of trading in a decade. ‘We hope that by the beginning of next year it will be better than this year.’ Would 2004 see any improvement? ‘We do hope a lot,’ he replies.

Marchetti is relying on new 90t and 120t models, being launched at Bauma in Munich in March/April, to help turn around the company’s fortunes. The wheeled crane market in Italy was about 200 units last year, says Attilio Bruni, the Bendini dealer. Of these, about 45% are rough terrain cranes, says Liebherr’s Vidali. RTs are especially popular in Italy at least partly because they are allowed to drive (albeit slowly) on the road – they have received special governmental dispensation, explains Bruni. Despite being street legal, they still aren’t easy to transport by road, which is why most are owned by the enduser construction contractors instead of rental companies, he says. ‘Rental companies have 90% ATs, 10% RTs,’ says Bruni.

Tower cranes
Imports of towers cranes into Italy from France, Spain and Germany were down dramatically in 2003, by more than 65% in the first six months. But because there are so many domestic manufacturers, imports account for a statistically insignificant fraction of the total market.

Terex Comedil commercial director Mariano Moritschestimates the Italian domestic market of self-erectors and tower cranes to be about 5,000 units in 2003, though he admits that as there are no official figures, such estimates are difficult to confirm. He says that the market was stable in 2003, or maybe down a little.

‘There was some decrease in terms of demand of self-erectors,’ he said. ‘I have scheduled my budget with a 10% decrease, but this may not happen. There are still a lot of very old cranes in Italy. The market is different here than abroad. Here people still want to own the crane. Even though rental is growing, it is not growing as much as in other markets.’

Moritsch says that Comedil sold 400 cranes in Italy from January to October, of which half were self-erectors.

Terex Comedil, exports about 50% of its output and its biggest markets are the UK, where it is represented by rental company Select, and south east Asia. Commercial director Mariano Moritsch says that large luffers are selling particularly well, with more than 50 units sold in the past three years.

Francesco Valcarenghi, export manager for Edilgru, manufacturer of self-erectors, also talks of the rental market growing. Edilgru sold about 30 cranes to rental fleets in 2003. ‘It’s going well,’ says Valcarenghi.

Elsewhere there are mixed messages about activity levels. ‘We are working but not in a boom,’ says Corrado dall Benetta, managing director of Gru Dalbe, a firm that produces primarily self-erectors and exports 90% of its output. ‘We have expectations on the international market, Germany for example, because it can only get better.’

Carlo Raimondi says that the domestic market is still strong. ‘The real estate market is still lively,’ says managing director Eugenio Torello. ‘I am told by colleagues making self-erectors that the self-erecting market has declined a bit. For now I cannot say I have seen a decline in the [top-slewing] tower crane market.’

There have been projects too for large cranes – refineries, power stations, chemical plants – but the main motor of the industry has been housing. ‘I heard on the radio in July that Italian financial institutions had their highest ever sale of mortgages,’ Torello says. Cranes are in demand because of a housing boom that began when the Euro was introduced, lowering interest rates enough so that Italians could afford mortgages, which for dozens of years they could not.

Raimondi’s big push this year has been to convert all its A-frame saddle-jib city cranes into flat-top models. ‘It’s a little bit fashion and a little bit practicality,’ says Torello. Tiebar preparation on saddle-jib cranes takes a few hours of hard manual work, he says. On the other hand, larger pieces are required, which can be more cumbersome – which would not be a major problem given that most tower cranes do not travel far from their depot, he says. Overall, there is no significant price difference.

Comedil also favours the concept. ‘The combination of flat-top design and city crane philosophy – such as all winches are pre-assembled – make the erection time something that would have been unbelievable five years ago,’ says Moritsch. ‘We can erect a 60m jib crane in a day or a day and a half.’

Gru Dalbe is planning the launch of the provisionally-named HS 380 self-erector, which will compete against the smallest city cranes. Lifting 1t at 36m jib end, this size of crane represents the meeting point of self-erectors and city cranes.

Raimondi has traditionally made 45tm city cranes and has had ‘some gratifying response’ to its newer 36tm flat-top city crane. ‘We do not expect these cranes to replace the self-erectors, but just to have a little share of the 35-36tm market,’ Torello says. ‘It is small but significant enough for us. Some dealers are trying to push me further down to the 30tm level. For the moment I’m not inclined to follow them.’

Comedil is planning to bring out a 50tm city crane to carry the competition to big self-erectors in Italy. ‘We have seen most companies that use big self-erectors spend at purchase close to double that of a city crane, because they still need two trailers just like a city crane, and they are not hydraulic and need special erectors to be disassembled before transport. In Germany and France, they can be transported with road axles so they don’t need to be disassembled. In Italy, road braking axles are not allowed and cranes must be a maximum of 4m in height and 14m in length,’ Moritsch said.

Having said all of that, however, he adds that Comedil itself may have ready in time for Bauma an hydraulically operated self-erector with 40m jib and 1t lifting capacity at the tip – a direct alternative to its city crane.