In the past 20 years Sennebogen Maschinnenfabrik has manufactured 16,000 machines. But it is only in the past three years that the present shape of the company has developed. Today at its headquarters in Straubing, near Germany’s border with the Czech Republic, it manufactures crawler and wheeled cranes with telescopic and lattice booms, port cranes, and a Green Line range of scrap handling equipment. It also has a factory in Wackersdorf producing excavators for Caterpillar, and since 1996 it has owned a steel plant in Hungary on the site of a former shipyard on Lake Balaton.
The deal with Caterpillar has been the making of Sennebogen. In 1990 it produced more than 1,000 machines in Straubing, 90% of them excavators. In 1991 it delivered its first Cat-branded excavator as part of a joint venture with excavator manufacturers Caterpillar and Eder and distributor Zeppelin. Eder left the JV in 1994, followed by Zeppelin in 1998. Now the venture is 92% owned by Cat and 8% Sennebogen.
The company has a history of cooperation agreements. Between 1980 and 1996 it produced 7,500 wheeled hydraulic excavators for Zeppelin for the German market, and for export markets it produced mobile and crawler excavators for Hanomag from 1986 until 1990 when Hanomag was taken over by Komatsu of Japan.
The company was founded by Erich Sennebogen in 1952 and made its first hydraulic excavator 10 years later. In 1969 the company produced the first hydraulic lattice boom crawler crane in Europe; it was designed for dragline applications.
Today the group turnover is more than DM400m ($200m), 65% of it from excavator production, and has more than 800 employees.
Erich Sennebogen Jr, son of the founder and managing director since 1993, says the real development of the company took place from 1991 to 1997, a period which saw excavator manufacturing phased out of Straubing and moved over to the new plant at Wackersdorf. “This gave us the opportunity and the space – and okay, also the money – to produce a line which we couldn’t before,” he says. “All the products that we have were born in the last eight years. We made a tremendous effort in product development, sales activity and the distribution network.” At Bauma 1992 Sennebogen introduced what was then its biggest crane, a 60t lattice boom crawler. By Bauma 1998, it had produced an 180t machine, the HD 6180. Lattice boom crawler cranes are probably what the Sennebogen brand is most closely associated with. The 6100, a 100t crawler, is its best selling crane.
Launched this year is the 6150, Sennebogen’s first crawler designed as a lift crane. The original plan was to launch it at Intermat back in May, but it was not ready. It is, however, scheduled to go into production in the next month or two and the first unit will be delivered before the end of the year, says Erich Jr. It has similar reach and attachments as Liebherr-Werk Nenzing’s new lift crane, the 140t-rated LR 1140. However, rated at 150t, Sennebogen’s crane has better lifting capacities, according to Erich Jr.
“If it is a success, it will be the first of a new line of lift cranes from Sennebogen,” he says. Five orders have already been received from Van Seumeren and one from Hans Dekker, all in the Netherlands, but this is not enough for the crane to be judged a success yet, he says.
We can expect to see the 6150 at Bauma next year, along with an updated 60t/70t class crawler. Sennebogen plans to show about eight machines at Bauma, as it did last time in 1998.
Erich Jr says that the market for crawler cranes is not so good at the moment in Germany, where they are used primarily as foundation machines and not lift cranes, but business elsewhere in Europe is good. Sennebogen now has established distribution agreements covering all of Europe and the Middle East.
Product lines
The Green Line of scrap handling machines was launched in 1996 and is now Sennebogen’s biggest selling line. This year it will produce about 100 Green Line machines, which compete primarily with Liebherr and Fuchs.
The success of these machines has prompted the company to set up Sennebogen LLC in the USA. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, the new subsidiary will market Green Line machines in eastern states and is looking for three or four dealers to cover the rest of the country.
As for cranes in the USA, Erich Jr says: “At the moment we are just watching. Our new 6150 is a crane that fits the market there so this would be a good sized product for the USA.” Sennebogen has also dipped a toe into the dockside sector, launching its port crane series in 1998. “We are stepping in slowly,” he says. “It is not a tremendous market. We have sold about five units.” Of these sales, some have been into China, a country that Sennebogen is particularly targeting for all its products. “China is our number one priority,” Erich Jr says.
As far as cranes are concerned, Sennebogen’s customers are mainly construction contractors but a new product this year is specifically targeted at rental companies. The GT 35 is a truck-mounted version of Sennebogen’s 30t-rated model 630, which is usually offered either on crawlers or on rubber tyres as a rough terrain or yard crane. It has been developed in cooperation with Rene Hellmich, a German crane dealer, crane hirer, and crane magazine publisher.
Erich Jr explains: “The GT 35 came about because Rene Hellmich came to us and said he could imagine mounting the 630 on a truck. We had thought about putting our 613 on a truck a couple of years ago, but that model is too small.” (The 613 is a 16t-rated wheeled telescopic crane; about 200 units have been sold since its launch in 1992.) Hellmich had previously distributed Luna truck cranes and was looking for a replacement. Hellmich will sell the crane in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, while Sennebogen will promote it in non-German speaking countries. Rene Hellmich says that he believes he can sell about 20 units a year.
Mounted on a three-axle commercial chassis, with a special frame added between the truck and the crane, the GT 35 is rated at 35t and can lift 3t at 20m. A four-axle version, the 40t rated GT 40, is also an option.
Erich Sennebogen Jr says that he has no desire to go further into the truck crane market though. “Hellmich knows the rental business. AT and truck cranes is not our world. There is too much competition and you need a full line to compete, so that is absolutely uninteresting to us. This was just a nice extension, coming out of our wheeled and crawler version.” Sennebogen is a company that has not been afraid to experiment with new ideas. It is one of the benefits of being family owned – the autocratic structure makes decision-making quick and simple. For example, the company is persevering with the TS9 Multihandler, a 3t capacity telescopic handler, that it showed in early prototype from at Bauma 98. The two prototypes that were made were both sold but the product has yet to take off. But it is a special project of Erich Sennebogen Sr, who is 69 next month and remains president of the company. He keeps such a close interest that he lives in the factory compound on the top floor of the office block. The telehandler has been further refined and a 3.5t capacity, continuous rotation machine is being field tested and is likely to be on show at Bauma next year.
(The wheeled 613 has telehandler characteristics, such as forklift and aerial work platform attachments, but at 16t SWL it is clearly a crane and too big to be considered for a telehandler, says Erich Jr.)
Facing the future
In an industry dominated by big companies, and with consolidation gathering pace, comparatively small, family-owned companies like Sennebogen are under increasing pressure. But Erich Sennebogen Jr is confident that the company can continue successfully with its current structure.
“The crane business is not the only business of Sennebogen, though it is one of our core businesses. As a family company we can find a good place for ourselves in the global market,’ he says. “We are flexible, we are fast.” He has no desire to sell the company or see it move into public ownership. Family ownership has benefits in the marketplace, he believes.
“I think that customers like the fact that they can speak with Mr Sennebogen, someone who is not a manager who is going to leave the company tomorrow,” he says.
He continues: “The company is well financed – no problems there. We have a good staff and good ideas for the future. Our only problem is that the size of our factory here is constrained.” Indeed it is. The 44,000m2 facility at Straubing, 12,000m2 of which is covered production area, is quite clearly inadequate for the company’s needs. The factory is in the middle of the town; expansion is restricted by a railway line and built development on all sides. The company struggles to find space needed to test its bigger cranes rigged with long booms. The time may be coming for Sennebogen to move into the next stage of its development.
