IC100 crane company ranking 2023: Up all areas

Front cover of ICST June 2023

Marking this year’s IC100 table is what can largely be said to be a return to a more typical level of increase. Mostly that means with larger improvement in more of the totals than the 2022 IC100.

Some big changes characterised last year’s table and many of its metrics were down. This year there is less disruption and more steady increase. It is much more positive.

Let’s start with some basic numbers. The 216 total number of entries compares closely with the 218 of last year but the total IC Index, as a combined figure for all the entries, this year is 34,510,957 points, up a healthy 5.85 per cent on the 32,602,533 total of 2022.

While that is just really a headline figure, the increase is even greater when comparing the top 100 companies. This year’s top 100 total is 32,377,509, a full 6.1 % higher than the top 100 total of 2022 which was 30,517,161 points. It is also within a few points of the 2022 grand total. Note that the Top 100 companies’ total this year represents 94 % of the grand total figure for all 216 entries this year.

Looking at the composition of the table, two of the 11 new entries this year made it into the top 100, the highest of which is in 32nd place. As we always make clear, this IC100 is a constantly evolving beast. We know there are more companies we already know that need to be added, and we know there will be companies we don’t know that could also be in.

Strong long-term growth

One of the main things that makes it valuable of course is the overall longer term trends that can be drawn from the decades of data we have collected. Just looking relatively recently, this year’s IC100 total is up nearly 23 % on the same figure five years ago.

The number of wheeled cranes is pretty much static at something over 26,000 units, or about the same as it was five years ago. An interesting change, however, is the number of lattice boom cranes, up by an impressive 19 % from 6,763 to 8,054 units in the same period. Similarly, it should be noted that both the above metrics also do show increases over 2022, of 3.08 and 8.38 %, respectively.

As to the other changes from last year: The number of depots for the top 100 companies is up 2.95 % to 1,572. There are more employees, up 5.54 % to 84,772 this year, over last year’s 80,325. For the two years before last there was a decline in the number of employees.

Just taking a quick look at the top 20 companies, they were mostly still increases and there was one decline. All but one of the increases (lattice cranes) were changes of less than 1 %. The only decline was also negligible in that the top 20 companies employed 24 fewer people than last year.

One of US crawler crane specialist Buckner’s two Liebherr LR 13000 lattice boom giants. This 3,000 tonne capacity crane is working at Intel’s Ocotillo Campus in Chandler, Arizona, USA. It is lifting a total of 36 steel trusses, each 51 metres long and weighing 163 tonnes, for the new building’s roof. Photo: Nader Shakerin/Intel/Buckner

Which are the top crane companies?

The top seven companies all hold the same positions as last year with the gap between perennial leader Mammoet and its nearest rival Sarens, again smaller than the year before. Last year the gap was 837,946 points whereas this year it is down to 646,318 points, or 23 % less than last year.

So, the first change in the table, in 8th place is a two place move up for China Nuclear Industry Mechanical Engineering Co Ltd, displacing Maxim from the USA. Fellow Chinese company Shandong Gulf Lifting Engineering maintains its 9th place from last year while Sinopec, also from China, moves into the top ten from 11th place, now occupied by Maxim.

Quickly scanning down the table, notable upward moves include Denzai, Tiong Woon, and Schmidbauer. First of the new entries is Berdikari Pondasi Perkasa (BPP), in at 32, just a place above fellow Indonesian company Superkrane Mitra Utama. You might say Asia seems to be largely where things are happening at the moment.

The 2023 IC100 table of the world’s largest crane-owning companies. Image: ICST/KHL Group