Sole crane company says country needs own crane industry
Kyiv`s building boom is driving demand for construction cranes, but according to Construction Crane Management, the only crane supplier in the city, the majority of cranes operating in the capital are Soviet-made. The company, which is an independent offshoot of Kyiv-miskbud, the city’s main construction project developer, said that Ukraine has just begun to import foreign-made cranes. Their number is growing, but slowly.
Fedir Nimko, Construction Crane Management’s general director, said his company controls close to 90 percent of all cranes operating in the city, while other construction companies own the rest.
“The majority of construction cranes in Kyiv are Soviet-made. Today, there are about 250 cranes in the city. That’s a very large number,” Nimko said.
He said the company maintains good business relations with the former Soviet republics from which it has managed to procure the cranes for Kyiv’s building needs.
“Our company has the largest collection of cranes in the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Nimko said. “We are unique in this way, and are probably the only firm of our kind in the CIS.”
Nimko said that Ukraine is in desperate need of its own construction crane industry. The country has begun building in line with Western construction standards, but prices for the high-quality foreign-made cranes needed for new construction are currently prohibitive.
“Almost no one makes cranes in the CIS,” he said. “Ukraine does not make cranes, although currently there is an attempt to make a prototype in Donetsk. But there is no serial production yet.”
He said that the only crane producer that remains in the former Soviet Union is located in Russia’s Tversk Oblast.
“The cranes we use were produced throughout the Soviet Union, up until 1992. Except for the plant in Tversk, all the other crane producers have died off.”
Meanwhile, Nimko said, higher construction standards are fueling demand for modern construction cranes.
“Construction methods have been approaching European standards in the last two years, with technologies requiring cranes with modifications and parameters that were not earlier necessary,” he said. “Today, we need cranes with a 100 meter lift capacity and a radial reach of 50 meters or more.”
The Tversk plant currently produces state-of-the-art cranes, but their number is insufficient to meet Kyiv’s demands, Nimko said.
Cranes by the German firm Liebcher and the French firm Patian meet the required construction standards, he said. “But they are very expensive, and cost between 300,000 and 450,000 euros each. To talk about a mass replacement of Soviet cranes at this time is out of the question.” He said that some cranes were also imported from Turkey.
Russian-made cranes are also expensive, he said, which is why Ukraine needs its own crane manufacturing sector.
“For this we need investors,” Nimko said. “We don’t need to depend on the state. We need business structures interested in making a Ukrainian crane, which should be less expensive than imported ones.”
Construction Crane Management has bought Western-made cranes. “But they are used cranes, and therefore less expensive,” Nimko said. The company bought one new Western crane last year, and will probably buy two more by the end of this year.
Nimko said the city’s burgeoning middle class are the only investors driving construction of new residential projects in Kyiv, with no involvement from municipal or state structures. Kyiv sees the bulk of all construction in Ukraine because most of the nation’s wealth is concentrated here.
“There are around 40 cranes operating in Obolon alone, on the Heroes of Stalingrad Prospect, which is a new neighborhood. Between 95 and 98 percent of all construction investment in Kyiv comes from future residents of the new buildings.”
Nimko said that virtually all regions, including their capitals, compared weakly with Kyiv in terms of construction rates and, therefore, in the number of cranes in use.
“There are currently maybe five or six cranes in use in Kharkiv, and one in Zhytomyr,” Nimko said.
Employing a force of 800 technicians and specialists to operate and maintain its cranes, Construction Crane Management typically leases cranes to other construction companies, although some firms buy their own cranes. Nimko said his company also operates and services cranes owned by the other construction firms.
Out of his company’s 250 cranes, about 40 percent are leased out to Kyivmiskbud. The rest are leased to other firms.
“A new system has emerged that looks good for development: other firms buy new cranes, and then give them to us to maintain,” he said.
This allows his firm to exercise a sort of quality control on Soviet-made equipment that might not be up to contemporary standards. It’s a stop-gap solution, perhaps, but Nimko says that “it’s working in Kyiv.”
He also stressed that cranes were among the safest equipment in the construction industry.
“We have an entire department that concentrates on safety,” he explained, adding, “Out of 250 cranes, if there is one accident, it’s not something to make a big deal over. Newspapers chasing after sensations can sometimes blow things out of proportion.”
