Paulo Carvalho says, “It was founded 35 years ago. In fact, Mr Afonso Carvalho (my father) started in this area 45 years ago working with scaffoldings and construction elevators. He sold one of the first construction elevators in this country. The company started working with tower cranes, construction elevators and scaffolding. Now tower cranes are our exclusive product line. Locabens is one of the companies owned by the family. We also have a crane parts company, real estate business and wineries and vineyards in Portugal.
“Since 1995 we have been investing in our tower crane fleet and now we have the biggest and the newest one in Brazil and one of the biggest in Latin America. We have about ninety tower cranes from 40–400t/m. Most are top slewing, and around sixty are Potains from 2000 to 2007. In most cases the cost is the main focus. The biggest contractors usually consider the technology and decide for the best balance between cost and technology.”
Carvalho says “We have the biggest rental fleet. Based on our records, our market share is around 33%.”
Locabens works in residential construction, infrastructure and industrial projects, not just in Brazil, but worldwide. Carvalho says, “We have cranes rented in Uruguay and Argentina, we’ve sold to Chile, and worked as far away as [Portuguese-speaking] Angola. We often work with other Brazilian companies when we work outside of South America. Usually, when we’re working within the continent, we work with local firms.”
Locabens tower cranes at work on a floating production, storage and offloading vessel. Locabens FPSO
