Friday round up: growth, passion, legacies and how to build an island

Photo: Schmidbauer

We started the week of 23 September with a bang in the Crane and Transport Briefing, revealing the world’s fastest-growing crane-owning companies.

Using trend data derived from our well known and long established IC100 ranking of the world’s largest crane companies, Murray Pollok established which are the fastest growing crane companies and added some context.

Company growth was one topic in D.Ann Shiffler’s wide-ranging interview with Randy Sever, COO at PSC Crane & Rigging in the USA. Now more than 90 years old the company is run by the fourth generation of the founder’s family. Expansion has been exponential in the last 25 years.

Also sharing his experience, this time in the tower crane business, was Sam Moyer, general manager at All Tower Crane in the USA. He made a personal and passionate keynote presentation at the Tower Cranes North America conference in June this year. Growth featured again among Moyer’s talk of trends, challenges and experiences in the tower crane sector.

Tower cranes and telescopic boom crawler cranes are crucial elements at a factory in the Netherlands making vast concrete elements to be used to construct the world’s first so-called energy island. Building an entire artificial island is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a multi-billion dollar undertaking. Lucy Barnard found out how it is being done.

In more detail

Which are the fastest growing crane-owning companies in the world?

The IC100 ranking compiled by International Cranes and Specialized Transport is hotly anticipated by the crane industry each year.

It provides a snapshot of who the world’s biggest players are and allows the industry to track what has changed over the past 12 months – fleet size, number of employees, largest capacity crane.

Perhaps the best measure of a crane company’s growth – outside of its annual revenues - is the percentage increase year-on-year of its IC Index, a figure derived from the total combined maximum load moment rating in tonne-metres of all the cranes in a company’s fleet.

We have compared this year’s survey results against the 2023 list and created a league table of the top 10 fast growing crane companies in the world.

The top 10 come from all over the world, including companies from the USA, Brazil, Europe, Asia and the Middle East – and not all are the ‘big names’ of the industry.

Find out which were the 10 fastest growing crane-owning companies in the last year.

How PSC Crane & Rigging built a legacy: an interview with Randy Sever

With a history stretching back more than 90 years Piqua Steel Company, now PSC Crane & Rigging, has always been operated by the Sever family.

Having weathered the Great Depression and other economic storms, PSC endured and moved forward with its no-nonsense approach to rigging and millwrighting. The USA-based company is now known around the world for its innovation and expertise.

The fourth generation of the Sever family runs the business that has expanded exponentially over the last 25 years. Brothers Jim (president) and Randy (COO) are at the helm of the company their great grandfather founded.

D.Ann Shiffler interviewed Randy on a range of topics, including the company’s growth and his time in the industry, commenting, “I think you will enjoy reading what he has to say.” I think you will too.

Read more about Randy Sever’s take on the crane and rigging industry.

Why passion is key to growth: Sam Moyer on the tower crane industry

Giving a keynote speech at the recent TCNA conference in Nashville, USA, All’s Sam Moyer offered valuable advice on navigating industry trends and challenges in the tower crane industry.

He emphasised the importance of gaining a broad perspective and understanding the industry’s composition to make informed decisions. Moyer addressed key issues, including managing contracts, coping with rising costs, and dealing with workforce experience.

Moyer recommends forming strategic partnerships, being selective with contract terms, and seeking help in unfamiliar areas. He also stresses the significance of maintaining a passion for the industry, actively seeking solutions to challenges, and sharing knowledge with others to drive growth and innovation.

Read more about Sam Moyer’s experience and his views on the tower crane industry.

Cranes are crucial at factory to build world’s first energy island

Princess Elisabeth Island will be the world’s first ‘energy island’ – a multi-billion Euro artificial island in the North Sea built to gather the electricity produced by the growing number of wind turbines in the area and send it to shore in a more efficient manner. Lucy Barnard finds out how it is being built.

At the TM Edison yard in Vlissingen, Netherlands, workers are busy pouring concrete to make huge reinforced concrete blocks the size of a 10-storey apartment building. They will form the foundations for the huge new island. Each massive cube is 57 metres long, 30 metres wide and 30 metres high, and weighs 22,000 tonnes.

It takes a team of around 300 workers three months to build a single block. A range of tower cranes and telescopic crawler cranes are essential elements in these operations.

The completed caissons will be floated out to sea, towed to a position about 45 kilometres off the coast of Belgium. There they will be sunk and filled with sand to form the foundations of a project designed to turbocharge offshore wind power in the North Sea.

Read more about the ambitious man-made island project and the role of cranes.

All the above stories were featured in KHL’s new Crane and Transport Briefing in the week beginning 23 September.