The company, which also manufactures earthmoving machinery, aircraft equipment, refrigerators and machine tools, reported that its group turnover in the first half of 2007 was EUR 3.94bn (USD 5.3bn), up 19% on the same period in 2006. Construction machinery led other divisions, the company said. It added that it expected a 2007 turnover of more than EUR 7bn, 10% over its 2006 sales figure.

“The Liebherr Group entered the current business year with the highest level of orders in hand in its history,” the company said in a statement.

And it expects the situation to continue beyond 2007. “The dynamism of the US economy fell back only slightly, and the upturn in the Eurozone and Japan was maintained. Dynamic growth also persists in the developing and threshold countries.” The company called the international construction market “satisfactory” and predicted further growth in Europe. Half of the Liebherr Group’s sales are in western Europe; 75% in Europe, Middle (and Near) East and Africa.

In 2006, Liebherr reported that mobile crane growth reached 30% in Germany, which it called the largest single market for mobile cranes. Its number two mobile crane market was Spain. Other growing regions for mobile cranes included the USA, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia and Japan.

It claims a 44% market share in all-terrain cranes, a market that it says grew about 10% to 2,975 cranes delivered. Turnover of crawlers increased by 50%.

The company said that it has started to develop a four-axle hundred-tonner, and continued developing a 150t-capacity six-axle mobile crane. It also said that it has started to develop a 600t capacity crawler.

Raw materials, particularly steel, continued to be a bottleneck for crane production, although tyres have become more available. The Ehingen, Germany crane factory has begun work on a new 18,000 sq m erecting shop for crawler cranes, to be commissioned in 2009. The company said it expects 2007 mobile crane turnover to exceed EUR 1.5bn.

Tower cranes also increased, the company said, with “above-average” increases in tower crane sales in Germany – its number one market – and France (number two) and the Netherlands. Sales nearly doubled in Russia. It sold a total of 440 construction cranes in 2006, a slight dip compared to 2005, but it said that total earnings were higher. Tower crane orders in hand at the beginning of 2006 doubled compared with 2005. It predicts 2007 sales revenue of Eur 815m.

In the annual report, chairman of the supervisory board Willi Liebherr, and vice-chairman and his sister Isolde Liebherr (the company is 100% family-owned), apologised for the long delays in waiting times.

“The tasks we face in the current business year once again represent a severe challenge. This is the fourth successive year in which we have had to come to terms with the consequences of significant growth.

We are nonetheless aware that even the increased output now available from our production resources will be insufficient to satisfy customers’ wishes in all product areas within a reasonable time. This is the situation at the moment, despite all the previous years’ increases in capacity and the new record sum of more than half a billion Euros that we are investing in the current year.”

“One of the main points of emphasis is to develop our presence systematically on growth markets such as Russia, Brazil, China and India. We have either built new production facilities in these countries in recent years, or are in the process of doing so.”

The company has established a company in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, west of Moscow, and has plans for what they call a “major investment” in a Russian production plant making construction and aerospace components.

For the entire group, return on sales (profits) rose to 6.4%, compared with 5.3% in 2005.


Liebherr EC-B tower cranes working in Paris Liebherr EC-B tower cranes working in Paris