Liebherr holds off on crane plant

Liebherr has no plans to introduce a manufacturing plant in Brazil for the production of crawler or mobile cranes in the immediate future.

Georg Reinbold, area sales manager for mobile and crawler cranes, said, ¨We are investigating the possibility of producing custom products for this market, but we find that it is cheaper for the customer to import existing cranes rather than producing or assembling locally.¨

Although Reinbold added that sooner-or-later, possibly in the next three to five years, Liebherr could set up such a facility but it would depend on whether local suppliers were able to provide the required components and parts. For example, Brazil is not yet able to supply the high strength steel used on many of the manufacturer´s crawler and wheeled-mobile cranes.

The 220 tonne capacity LTM 1220 wheeled mobile telescopic crane is the biggest selling crane product from Liebherr in Brazil. There are more than 150 units in the Brazilian market, said Reinbold.

While wheeled mobile sales are still buoyant, Reinbold added that crawler sales had dropped off from last year while contractors wait for major infrastructure projects to be signed off by the government.