How badly was the Liebherr Group actually affected by the global financial and economic crisis?

Dr. Liebherr: In 2009, after five years of dynamic growth, we had to absorb a 17-percent drop in turnover, to approximately seven billion Euros. But there were product areas in which turnover increased, for instance the Aerospace and Transportation System division and also our maritime cranes activities.

We are fortunate to be active in a large number of very different business sectors. If the results from one of them are not so good, we may well be trading very positively in another.

We anticipate growth of at least five percent in 2010. This is a conservative forecast. Most of our product areas seem to have passed through their low point, and we can therefore take a confident overall view of the months to come, though there are naturally areas in which we shall still need staying power.

Are jobs in danger?

Dr. Liebherr: At the moment we are taking every possible step to avoid redundancies for operational reasons. For example, we were able to transfer a considerable number of employees from factories where business is weak to other Liebherr companies and offer them jobs there. For our German companies, which account for almost half of our total workforce, we agreed an employment guarantee package last year. We are unable to rule out the possibility of redundancies for operational reasons in certain cases, but there is no question whatsoever of a wave of dismissals occurring, and we are determined to keep our workforce intact.

You are currently building new factories in Russia, India and Mexico. Isn’t this a source of anxiety at the traditional Liebherr locations in Europe?

Dr. Liebherr: No, there’s no need for anxiety. We pursue a forward-moving strategy at our various locations. On the one hand we have to maintain the security of production facilities on our traditional markets, but on the other we must strengthen our presence on growth markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Let us look back at the past business year. In view of the crisis we were naturally obliged to reduce our investment volume, but we continued none the less with projects of central strategic importance, regardless of whether these were devoted to our traditional markets or to growth markets.

In Germany, for instance, we invested in plant extensions at the Ehingen, Rostock and Kempten production sites, where we build mobile cranes, maritime cranes and machine tools. France is another example: we have built a new production facility for mining equipment in Colmar, which will go into operation this year. And in Toulouse we are investing in an aircraft equipment test centre.

We are also pressing ahead with the projects you have referred to in Russia, India and Mexico. The Russian project currently involves the earthmoving, tower crane and aircraft equipment product areas. In India, the emphasis is on tower cranes and mixing technology.

Our investment in Mexico has to be seen against a different background: from there, we intend to supply wind power components to the North American market.

Our aim is therefore for new factories on strategically important markets to complement the traditional European locations, but without the one activity being to the detriment of the other. On the contrary, our traditional locations are fully involved in the development of these new markets.

The Liebherr Group sells its products worldwide. There are markets that call for hi-tech products and others that are extremely price-conscious. How does Liebherr cope with this conflict of interests?

Dr. Liebherr: It is becoming increasingly obvious that both approaches have to be pursued in parallel. The highly developed markets call for our machines to meet very demanding technical standards. Examples of this are the increasingly severe exhaust emission limits imposed on diesel engines, or the need for maximum performance in engine management and equipment control systems.

For us, the challenge is to enhance the efficiency of our machines still further and to achieve further reductions in their fuel consumption. For this reason we are currently working intensively on energy recovery. Our aim is quite literally to coax every additional percentage of energy saving we can out of the overall system.

But at the same time we supply markets that have quite different demands. They do not yet need these advanced technologies, and machines equipped in this way are simply to expensive – a situation that applies to all manufacturers. We tune our product programme and also the production alliance between our companies to match these differing requirements.

An example of this is our latest crawler excavator model generation. These machines are supplied as a standard version, which we call “Classic”, and also as an “Advanced” version containing absolute cutting-edge technology. This enables us to satisfy the demands of all markets. In other words we adapt our products at the design stage to satisfy widely varying needs.

Let us take this opportunity to look back into the past. It is almost twenty years since you took over a successful Group of Companies from your father, Dr. Hans Liebherr. How would you and your sister sum up the current position?

Dr. Liebherr: The first thing to note is that the Group has grown enormously in this period. The workforce has more than doubled, from 15,000 to approximately 32,000, and turnover is four times higher. We also restructured the Group into product divisions. Last but not least, we greatly extended both the width and the depth of our product programme.

In the mining area, for example, we started with our large dump trucks about twelve years ago. Today there is no major mining company anywhere in the world that does not operate our trucks. Building up this product area cost us large sums of money at first. If the business plan for this project had been submitted at a company quoted on the stock market, it would surely never have been approved. But we are a family-owned company, and decided to go ahead with it.

Another example is that we want to benefit to a greater extent from the key components that we manufacture for many of our products. There are various opportunities waiting to be exploited there. Take for instance our diesel engines or the large anti-friction bearings we now supply to the wind power industry. These are significant new business areas for us.