Liebherr Press Breakfast

　　at Bauma China 2010

　　November 24, 2010

　　Current Market Developments

　　for Liebherr Mobile Cranes

　　presented by

　　Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Christoph Kleiner

　　Managing Director

　　Liebherr-Werk Ehingen GmbH

　　Ehingen (Germany)

　　Ladies and Gentlemen,

　　It is my second visit to China within only two months and so I feel a little like being at home. Before I talk about the market for Liebherr Mobile Cranes in China and our exhibit here at Bauma China, let me provide you with some data about our division and comments on the current market situation.

　　The Liebherr Mobile Crane Division is based in Ehingen, Germany, where it operates manufacturing facilities covering a built-over area of 200,000 m² on a total surface of 840,000 m², and employs more than 2.700 high qualified staff. Our production range at Liebherr-Werk Ehingen GmbH consists for the most part of all-terrain mobile cranes, which represent a 75 % share of sales turnover. With a market share of currently 50 % Liebherr is the world market leader in this segment, . Another important product sector is that of our lattice boom crawler cranes. At Ehingen we design and manufacture crawler cranes with load capacities from 350 tonnes to 3,000 tonnes. Additionally, we manufacture lattice boom mobile cranes, telescopic crawler cranes, and telescopic truck-mounted cranes.

　　Despite the financial and economic crisis, we are driving forward with all the investments we have begun and planned, both at our location at Ehingen as well as with the expansion of our worldwide marketing and service network.

　　Crawler and lattice boom cranes have been constructed in our new assembly hall for about two years now, and since March this year a new open-air site of 180,000 m² in area has been in operation for the acceptance testing of telescopic mobile cranes. A new dispatch hall with a surface area of 11.000 m² is presently under construction.

　　A year ago Liebherr reported on new service branch bases in Australia, India, North Africa, Poland, and Finland, which amongst other activities are also used to provide services for Mobile Crane customers. Added to these is now a new repair and logistics centre for construction machinery near Moscow, which celebrated its opening on 31 March, and where 150 personnel are already hard at work.

　　Although in many sectors the crisis does appear to have been overcome, it is still biting hard on the market for mobile cranes. There was also a slight delay in its effect on our sector. Following a record year in 2008, we were faced in 2009 with a decline in the all-terrain crane segment of 25%, with only about 2,700 units delivered worldwide. The AT market slipped still further in 2010 and we expect for the whole year a volume of around 1,900 AT-cranes worldwide. In consequence we have reduced our production range step by step. As a result, the Liebherr plant in Ehingen will deliver about 1,200 cranes in 2010. A positive point to be noted is that we have been able to increase our market share in AT cranes from 43% to about 50%, and I believe we have our total portfolio to thank for this. Our portfolio package includes quality, service, spare parts availability, value stability, and a sustained and long-term corporate policy.

　　The market for large crawler cranes above 300 t over the past few years has shown extraordinarily positive development. With high-performance and economical crane developments and efficient detailed solutions we have been able to fulfil our customers’ needs particularly well, and as a result we have appreciably enlarged our market share in this segment. This year we are building about 70 large lattice boom cranes at Ehingen, which is a record number for us, and we believe that we have now also secured the market leadership in this product segment too.

　　Now I would like to take a brief look at current developments on our most important markets:

　　Business in Brazil continued to be lively in 2010, and we are expecting this to continue in 2011. Demand in Australia is likewise very good. Following a sharp decline at the start of the economic crisis, Russia has in the meantime again shown substantially positive development.

　　In Europe our sales experience is at present unfortunately predominantly negative. Business on the markets in Spain, Hungary, Romania, and Great Britain continues to be weak. In Austria and France, sales figures at present are still down. The German market, too, where in 2009 we were able to benefit from extremely good demand, this year things have definitely cooled off.

　　In 2009 and again in 2010 the mobile crane market in North-America showed a dramatic downturn. This negative market development led to an extremely low level in crane deliveries.

　　Fortunately we can report more positive about the market in China. Due to the financial crisis in 2009 the Chinese government launched a stimulus package of 4 trillion RMB to promote the internal demand. The sales of Liebherr heavy-duty mobile cranes had grown in 2009 compared to 2008, and again in 2010. The market for large cranes in China shows continuous growth especially in infrastructure projects. Further China is promoting the alternative energy development, so wind power is still one of the main drivers for large mobile cranes from 500 t to 1,200 t capacity.

　　For many years China has been a very important market for our large mobile and crawler cranes, and development in the past five years has been particularly positive. Our best-seller in China is the LTM 1500-8.1, a 500-tonner with a telescopic boom of up to 84 metres. This model now is topped by the Liebherr 1,200-t-telecopic crane with a boom length of 100 m, as LTM 11200-9.1 on tyre chassis and as LTR 11200 on crawler chassis.

　　Two LTM 11200-9.1 are already at work in China, one belongs to our customer China Power Large Size Equipment Assembling Construction Co. Ltd., who also owns the first LTR 11200 in China, the crane we exhibit on our stand here at the fair. This model is optimized for the erection of wind power systems especially in wind parks, as the crane can drive with full equipment on the narrow roads from one windmill to the next unit to be erected. After we finished the press conference here in this room we will have a ceremony to handover the key to the customer right at the exhibit in the open space area. I would like to invite all of you to join the happy moment with us before we move upstairs in the booth to have our breakfast.

　　As mentioned earlier, we continue our investments, and we also have a good example here in China. This year Liebherr Machinery Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. moved into new premises. This allows us to expand our sales and service team significantly to maintain our service level.

　　All these factors, high quality products, high service level and availability, are very well received and should explain, why we were honoured by two awards just recently in September at the “2010 World Crane Summit”. Liebherr won the first prize in the category “World’s Top Mobile Crane Manufacturers” and the special prize of the “Excellence Award – World AT-Crane“ for outstanding services with regard to technical innovations, product performance, reliability, and market leadership.

　　But time is moving on. The market for mobile and crawler cranes is expected to have a moderate fall this year in the Liebherr sector of mobile cranes, by about 8% to some 1.6 billion