Not only the largest concrete pump market in the GCC, Saudi Arabia is significant on a global scale
While it’s no surprise that Saudi Arabia’s market for concrete equipment dwarfs the other GCC countries, the Kingdom commands heft on a global scale. With 350-400 truck mounted pumps estimated to be sold this year, and 1200 mixers, it is of a similar size to Turkey, and approximately double the size of the German market.
A number of the huge projects in the Kingdom have contributed to demand; one is example is the $10 billion King Abdullah Financial Centre in Riyadh, where Putzmeister has 20
stationary pumps and 40 placing booms.
The global market for concrete pumps has been estimated at 7000 pumps annually. But with the majority of these sold in China, and with the construction market there in the grips of a major slowdown, the total number of pumps that will be sold in 2012 is anyone’s guess.
The market is hard fought, between the main European brands, and in recent times, the Korean manufacturers of concrete pumps, JunJin and Everdigm, represented by Al Kifah and Saudi Diesel respectively, have grown their share of the Saudi market, positioning their pumps as a high quality offering combined with aggressive pricing strategies.
CIFA’s Middle East area manager, Denis Giacoma, says that demand in the Kingdom is still increasing, and he expects that the size of the market will continue to increase, topping 500 units annually in the next two years.
CIFA, the Italian concrete equipment manufacturer acquired by Zoomlion in 2008, are looking to increase their market share in Saudi, to 15%, up from the current 9%.
CIFA sales in the Middle East have been affected by the Arab Spring, particularly in Syria where until 18 months ago they had a strong presence.
“We had good market share, and of course the country is back to zero. It was a huge loss for us,the Syrian market, so we are trying now to divert this volume somewhere else in the area – it’s very difficult,” he said.
While Saudi Arabia is the region’s definite hotspot, Qatar is perhaps the only other market for concrete pump manufacturers which generates enthusiasm, though Oman is stable, and growing steadily.
Putzmeister Middle East’s regional director Jens Bawidamann says that they’ve seen a rise there in recent months. “Demand in Qatar has begun to pick up,” says Bawidamann. “The last two years there was almost nothing, but the enquiries we have from Qatar, and the deals we have finalised over the past two-to-three months, it’s an indication that things are really moving now.”
Others however, are less sanguine about the overall prospects of the Qatar market. Giacoma, while saying that they have ‘huge expectations’, says that nevertheless it remains a small market on a global scale; “even if the volume doubles still it will not be that significant”.
In the UAE, while there have been a number of residential tower projects reactivated in Dubai, the levels of idle equipment in the Emirate bodes poorly for sellers of new equipment, though their service teams are busy.
Indeed, with the majority of pumps and placing booms sold directly to concrete suppliers, and supplied with the concrete, in a number of cases the placing booms have become pawns in the chess game played out as suppliers wait to receive payments from stalled projects.
Often the placing booms are left waiting on idle construction sites as a tactic to ensure that the monies owed to the concrete supplier by the contractor are not forgotten.
Joe Lahoud, general manager at UAE-based Construction Machinery Center (CMC), which sells concrete equipment including Schwing Stetter and Wacker Neuson, says that in Abu Dhabi they have seen a slow-down in the projects, especially in the payments, with no new projects being released. In Dubai, many stalled projects – mainly towers – have been restarted, says Lahoud, though the number of new projects is very small.
“I think it’s a matter of developers sorting out their issues in the last years, after the crisis. And now because they have commitments to their clients and customers they have to deliver.
“On the other hand, the banks have loosened up a little bit in terms of financing, they’ve got a lot of cash due to the Arab Spring problems. Too much cash in the bank is not good, so they want to move it and invest it. We have noticed buildings are reactivated.”
The Costs of Inexperience
Image a scenario where the driver of a transit mixer decides to take a short-cut while driving on the job site.
While it’s a short cut he’s taken before, this time thetruck is fully laden, and starts to tip on the embankment – and topples into the project, crashing through four levels of the underground car park that have been recently poured.
All four levels have to be scrapped and restarted. While this may be on the extreme side of things, inexperienced operators are a big cost to the concrete industry. Joe Lahoud, general manager at CMC says the quality of the operators and drivers is a major problem.
“This is the main difference between here and Europe. Most of the concrete pump operators or transit mixer drivers come from the Far East, and they come with zero knowledge or experience, and they learn from people like them,” says Lahoud.
In concrete the problems that arise are people breaking machines, people pumping to heights that they shouldn’t pump, using the mobile pump as a stationary pump, which shouldn’t be done.
And the sophistication of the controls used on pumps has increased, particularly those from European manufacturers.
CMC have a very strict delivery process. “We don’t deliver any pump without proper theoretical and practical training for the operator. He has to know all the features of the pump, how to operate it, how to maintain it.”
