BTJ 3/2008 - Baltic Transport Journal

Looking at Russia,
waiting for China
An interview with Thomas Bachmann, Head of the Marketing Department
at Harbour Mobile Cranes, Liebherr-Werk Nenzing GmbH
We are meeting at Transrussia in Moscow.
How important is the Russian market for
Liebherr at the moment?
Russia is definitely a promising market for us
and we have a very good situation here since
we are spread close to the west, in the St. Petersburg
area, in the Black Sea region as well
as the Far East.
How big a share do you have in the Russian
market?
Globally we deliver around 90 mobile harbour
cranes per year. From that number, four
to six go to the Russian market. Sometimes it
is a little bit more – up to 10 machines. During
the last two years, Liebherr was the only
company to sell mobile harbour cranes into
the Russian market – a result of the continuous
market penetration of our Russian sales
office in Moscow and the headquarters in
Nenzing, Austria.
What about other countries in the Baltic
region?
The other countries have a particular capacity
of cranes available, they sooner or
later will buy new ones or exchange older
ones but not in the quantity we expect from
the Russian ports. Scandinavia had a very
strong growth in the 1980s and early 1990s,
then it cooled down a little bit, but during
the last two years we have observed that it is
catching up again. When mentioning Scandinavia,
I have to tell about our long-lasting
relationship with the port of Aabenraa.
They have excellent crane drivers. We have
a very regular exchange of information between
them and our technicians in order to
speed up handling capacity for bulk cargo.
They even achieve a 55-60 cycling time per
hour, which is tremendous.
And the German market?
Germany is not such a big market, because
it has a relatively short coastline. So the
most important markets for us are: Spain,
South America in general, specifically
Brazil, Turkey and several other European
countries. Italy has always been strong.
There are two Italian manufacturers, so it’s
not so easy. Italian ports have always, from
the very early stage, believed in the production
of mobile harbour cranes. Whereas in
other countries, it took a little bit longer.
Do you think that some ports in Europe
still need advice on why they should use
mobile harbour cranes?
At the moment, the mobile harbour cranes
have a certain reputation and most port operators
already know what this product can
do and what they can expect from it. We
have a growing number of orders. Last year,
we achieved a 30-40% increase in orders so I
believe that most of the port operators have
enough information to decide if they want
to keep smaller handling machines or if they
should invest in mobile harbour cranes. Of
course, a lot depends on the vessels sizes and
the kind of cargo handled in ports.
Do you sell many cranes to Chinese ports?
It is a very interesting area for us and our
competitors because, currently, mobile harbour
cranes are not really accepted there.
Chinese ports are to a large extent specialized
in either container handling or bulk cargo,
so a flexible tool like the mobile harbour
crane, isn’t really well-known in China. At
this moment, there are maybe only 10 mobile
harbour cranes there. But we hope that
there will be a similar tendency as in India.
Until 2000/2001 the Indian market, although
having a very long coastline and a huge population,
had no mobile harbour cranes at all.
In 2004 we won the first contract there and
in three and a half years we have delivered 25
machines. We hope that we will experience a
similar situation in China.
Are there any plans to open a production line
of mobile cranes there?
There have been rumours several times but
right now there is no Chinese manufacturer
of mobile harbour cranes. China is very
strong in Ship-To-Shore cranes. They have
a big advantage that on the Chinese market
there’s a huge demand in that kind of equipment.
And if any of the European producers
decides to open a mobile crane plant there,
Report
I would expect it’s definitely not Liebherr. If
you look at our history we still have most of
our companies in Western Europe. It is not a
typical philosophy for Liebherr to jump to the
lowest manufacturing cost, but rather to look
at where there is a good quality in the product,
where there are skilled workers.
Does this mean that you have no plans to
build a factory in Russia or Ukraine?
If we look at Liebherr as a whole group, you
will realize that Liebherr is producing everything
from small refrigerators to hydraulics
for the Airbus company. The maritime division
represents just 6-7% of the total Liebherr
turnover. However, we are big in our market
and we are already the market leader in the
three most important areas for mobile harbour
cranes – Europe, South America and the Middle
East. While there are currently no plans to
open up a factory for maritime cranes/components
in Russia or Ukraine, the signing of an
investment contract for co-operation between
Mr. Valery Shantsev, Governor and Head of
the Nizhny Novgorod regional government
and Dr.h.c. Dipl.-Ing (ETH) Willi Liebherr,
President of the Administrative Board of Liebherr-International
AG and proprietor of the
Liebherr Group of Companies has just taken
place by the end of March 2008, focusing on
the setting up of a new production site in the
town of Dzerzhinsk. This new company, representing
a planned investment volume of more
than 200 million Euros and creating more than
600 permanent new jobs, will produce and assemble
construction machines such as earthmoving
machines and tower cranes for the
Russian market.
Dariusz Szreter
Piotr Trusiewicz
3/2008 | Baltic Transport Journal | 33