Pull together
5 March 2008Gebr. Markewitsch has built a successful business specialising in plant installations. As part of the MultiLift group, it has access to an extensive range of lifting and transport equipment. Will North spoke to joint managing director Robert Markewitsch.
Andreas and Johann Markewitsch set up Gebrueder [Brothers] Markewitsch in 1946. Originally, the business worked in construction, but it expanded to work in lifting when the first mobile cranes became available in the Germany, in the mid-60s.
Robert Markewitsch explains, “It is now run by me and my cousin, Wolfgang. Our fathers first moved into cranes in 1964. They bought a Kässborer mobile lattice boom crane, the first mobile crane in Nürnberg (Nuremberg). They bought larger cranes over the following years, including their first hydraulic crane, a 20t Gottwald, in the early 70s.”
Markewitsch notes some important purchases, marking the development of the company’s lifting business: the firm’s first 40t crane came in 1968, followed by a 65-tonner in 1971 and a 125-tonner the next year. In 1983, Gebr. Markewitsch purchased a 200t crane, and then a 300t crane in 1986. A 500-tonner followed in 1992. The company’s development hasn’t ended there though.
Markewitsch says, “Our biggest crane at the moment is the AC 500/2. We’ve ordered one of the first of the new [1000t] AC 1000/9s. Terex-Demag wrote to us recently to say the first of these cranes would be delivered at the end of 2009. We’re getting the third one, so we expect it in early 2010.”
It’s not just big cranes that show the health of a business like Markewitsch’s. With its focus on factory installations, the business has developed a fleet that includes a range of cranes ideal for getting heavy loads into tight positions, with little room to manoeuvre.
Markewitsch says, “We do a lot of factory installations. We have access to a 65t boom truck, owned by MultiLift. We also use a Compact Truck CT 2 MultiTruck. This is a special type of crane that has a very short boom. It’s hydraulically driven, with each wheel independently powered. It can hold the load down low, and move through very tight corners, so it’s good for placing presses in factories.”
Ensuring crane and transporter availability when the customer requires it is always a problem for the lifting industry, especially at boom times like this. Gebr. Markewitsch has developed its relationships with other German firms to establish a jointly owned business, MultiLift, that allows all of the member companies to share their fleet, increasing availability and improving utilisation rates.
Markewitsch says, “We’d worked with some other companies for seven or eight years. We formed MultiLift with some of them about 12 years ago. As part MultiLift we have access to 110 trucks, 230 SPMTs, around 45 low loaders, 20 vessel bridges and 110 cranes: that’s a lot more than any firm would have on their own.”
The other MultiLift members are Aug. Alborn, P. Adams, Paule, Schindler & Schlachte, Weiland, and W. Mayer.
Markewitsch describes a recent Multilift job. “We worked for Siemens transporting a turbine, generator and transformer from Kelheim to Irsching. We loaded the 500t turbine and generator on to 20 axles, in a split axle combination: that’s one standard line of 20 axles, 3m wide, and a half width line beside it, to give a total width of 4.8m. The 250t transformer was taken on a 20-axle line of Scheuerle InterCombi transporters. When we got to the site, a crane lifted
the loads in the machine hall.”
