15.07.2011

Liebherr rises 9%

Liebherr, the world’s largest crane maker has reported revenues of €7.59 billion for 2010, a nine percent increase over 2009.

Mobile and crawler crane revenues increased 2.7 percent to €1.8 billion, while tower cranes and mixers edged up 1.1 percent to €520 million and maritime crane sales grew by 9.2 percent to €730 million.

The strongest area of growth for the group came from its earthmoving and mining division, where revenues climbed 33.3 percent to €2,412.7.

Revenues from construction related equipment, as a percentage of total group sales, increased from 58.6 percent in 2009 to 62.5 percent in 2010.

Among the non-construction related business, sales of refrigerators and freezers were up 8.5 percent to €819.8 million, while aerospace and transportation systems dipped slightly to €819.3 million.

Sales in Western Europe, were flat at €3,685.5 million, Eastern Europe increased 22.5 percent to €637.5 million. The Middle East fell by over 21 percent to 462 million, while sales in the Americas grew 30.6 percent to a new record of €1,127.1.

In Africa revenues were €350.0 million some 6.8 percent down on the prior year, while in comparison the Far East / Australia region saw sales jump 41.2 percent to €1.33 billion.

The Group’s 10 largest markets in the 2010 included: Germany, France, the USA, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Great Britain, China, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands.

Liebherr invested €544.1 million during the year in the construction and modernisation of production locations and the enlargement of its worldwide sales and service network, 14.5 percent less than it spent in 2009.

The investments included building of a new 11,000 square metre dispatch/final assembly building in Ehingen, Germany along with a new paint shop on the site.

A new 100,000 square metre facility was also erected at the company’s Rostock facility in Germany, to fabricate structural steelwork for ship and offshore cranes.

The new production facility in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, also came partially online in June, and will eventually produce tower cranes and construction equipment.

Liebherr is also building a plant in Pune, India, to build concrete mixers and batching plants along with sections for its tower cranes.

The company added 888 new jobs during the year taking the total number of people it employs up to 32,979. Of this 13,767 are employed in Germany, down slightly on the year, although employment at the Ehingen crane facility edged up slightly.

Liebherr says that it has had a good start to 2011, with the upward trend continuing and expects revenues in the first half of the year to be up 14 percent on the same period last year. It is anticipating a 10 percent increase for the year as a whole which would take revenues to more than €8.3 billion or well over $10 billion.