Having tasted the food, “now let’s see the kitchen, ”beamed Matthias Donner upon conclusion of a delightful lunch with a handful of colleagues and I at Liebherr-Werk Biberach. Of course, he was talking about the crane production facilities, which began operation in the 1950s and nowformone of the largestmanufacturing sites in the Liebherr Group producing tower cranes, mobile construction cranes and components.
“It’s interesting how many components we manufacture here,” says marketing manager Hans-Martin Frech. An eye-opening tour it was, indeed, but returning to a conference room overlooking a frozen, snow-covered landscape, Matthias Donner, executive vice president, Liebherr-Werk Biberach was frank in his assessment of the marketplace: “2010 is a year of sideways movement on 2009. The market is reorganising: companies remerging; others are splitting off in the tower crane business. In terms of new crane sales, demand is atmost 60% of what it was in 2007/2008.
“Around one-third of our construction-based orders were in anticipation of upcoming work. The downturn came in two phases. First, customers became apprehensive and delayed their projects, then financial markets crashed and it became difficult to proceed with investment.
“Have you seen the film Flight of the Phoenix?” Donner asks. “Our industry was flying in the sky, like in the movie, a sandstorm hit and we lost an engine (a market went down), then another one, and we landed in the desert.
“But there are opportunities. Total volume is down but it is a perfect time to enhance our offering to customers. A customer expects the same service in good times and bad.”
Unlike many, Liebherr claims not to have made wholesale redundancies. “It’s about making the business run efficiently whatever the economic climate; we didn’t expand during the boom period, for example, we just made the production facility more efficient.
For customers, it’s simple: it’s about lifting solutions that meet tighter budgets and reduced demand. Donner explains that, “construction companies have limited investment below 200tm capacity. The time to market in getting a job site finished faster requires prefabricated elements, which are increasing in size year-by-year. The need for a 6t crane has gone to 8t, 12t, and now even heavier. This results in fewer cranes covering a wider area of a site.
“Bottom-slewing crane markets are becoming more and more fragmented and rental driven. There is movement in the entrepreneurs’market; the farmer or small rental company owner with a tractor pulling the bottom-slewing crane to the job site, for example. If we want to address this customer group we have to be present everywhere around the corner; their market is just, say, a 30–50km radius. Furthermore, the crane must be mobile and easy to be installed.
The upgrade of existing wind farms, called re-powering, will also drive demand for lifting equipment in the future. “Towers get higher and existing locationsmay need to put bigger wind turbines on top of even taller towers. If this re-powering initiative takes place in geographical areas with very limited access for heavy lifting equipment or restricted ground area for installation (particularly in forest or farming areas) Liebherr can accommodate both: tower cranes with double hook operation andmobile cranes in all required load capacities. Discussions are already ongoing about putting a tower crane on an existing windmill for upgrading the wind turbines and using small telescopic cranes to erect them.
“For big power plants there is demand for big luffers and big top-slewing cranes. Therefore Liebherr offers a broad range of luffing cranes and filled the gap in the range of 280t; the 280 HC-L has a free standing tower height of 59.1m. Regarding 1,000t and bigger top-slewing cranes, in the last 12monthswe have received three timesmore enquiries than three to four years ago. Customers engaged in the construction of power plantswant elements (steel structures) pre-assembled on the ground and lifted in one, andwant to cover a bigworking radiuswith limited crane capacity on site.”
Hans-Martin Frech points to examples of recent product development, including the mobile 22 HM fast-erecting crane, which comes with a 40° steep angle position and a twin steering concept. “We often feel that customers can fulfil more jobs if we provide the right transport solution,“ he says.
“The MKmobile construction crane range is particularly popular in central Europe and is very common in the Netherlands. The crane arrives on one site in the morning then goes to another job by midday then another one after that. Erection and dismantling is fast and it can be installed directly in front of a building or construction site to gain more working radius.”
Donner interjects: “The working hours of a crane on a one/two-storey construction project could be just 10 hours, but normally a bottom-slewing crane is on site for months. Dutch contractors in the private housing building sector are saying, for instance, ‘we’re only using it for 10 hours, we’ll pay you on demand’. If that thinking mode became the same everywhere, what does it mean for manufacturers as well as for crane rental companies in terms of mobility?”
Like all suppliers, Liebherr is preening its feathers. Fresh off the back of the pre- Bauma press event in Munich, Gerold Dobler, corporate communications, trade press, Liebherr-International Deutschland GmbH, says: “Judging on the impact of previous Bauma shows, it could prompt an upturn.”
For now, it still appears to be pretty turbulent out there. Buckle up.
