Thus the first self-erecting tower crane came into being and 63 years on, Liebherr has expanded into a 5.5 billion euro group of 100 companies employing over 24,000 people in 29 locations on five continents. It is still run by the Liebherr family and they still make self erecting cranes, but as just one of their many products.
The crane factory is in the small Swabian town of Ehingen near the cathedral city of Ulm in southwest Germany. Surrounded by lush green fields, herds of contemplative dairy cows and arable farms, it seems a most unlikely place for a major industry. Heavy engineering factory it is, but it reflects the company's ethos that addressing challenges, either engineering or environmental, should be done with equal dedication.
Now the group makes precision-engineered products that range from 1,500 ton-lift mobile cranes through aircraft landing gear and huge mining and earthmoving machines to refrigeration plants. Their latest 18-wheel drive 1,500 tonner is the biggest wheeled crane in the world. It is capable of lifting the equivalent of five jumbo jets and from its air-conditioned computer filled cab drives like a car!
The mobile cranes - the wheel-mounted cranes as opposed to crawler cranes, which are track mounted - dominate the world market. Over the last five years, Liebherr made more than 40 percent of the world's all terrain mobile cranes.
It is still however their iconic yellow cranes that identify the company. The tall spindly but impossibly strong tower cranes are now a familiar sight around the world, the design copied and reiterated by many competitors.
What sets Liebherr apart is their legendary build-quality and engineering. "We have machines operating 30 years old that are still in perfect working order," said Wulf Floss, Liebherr's product manager in Saudi Arabia. "It has always been the company's core philosophy that we build to the highest standards because then with regular maintenance, the machines will last for decades. It really is a case that you only have to buy high quality once."
With the building boom in the Kingdom under way, and with the huge economic cities at Hail and Rabigh, and the huge developments in Makkah and KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) offering new construction challenges, Liebherr's experience and quality will be at a premium in the supply of cranes of all varieties, concrete batching and mixing equipment, and earth moving equipment.
Established in the Kingdom for over 35 years, the mammoth mobile cranes and earthmovers are a regular sight on the Kingdom's roads and construction sites along with the slow-churning mobile concrete mixers.
With their long working life, toughness and advanced technology, these reliable servants of the construction industry look set to stay a familiar feature on construction projects in Saudi Arabia for many years to come.
