Fleurieu Cranes recently took delivery of a Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1. To celebrate the arrival of the crane, both Liebherr and Fleurieu Cranes organised an official reception which attracted close to 200 from local South Australian crane companies and general industry representatives combined.
It’s a big step for a relatively small company – the new crane is only the fourth Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1 delivered in the country and the second largest capacity crane in South Australia.
Brandon Freer, Managing Director of Fleurieu Cranes, provides the background to the purchase and explains why the business has taken such a significant step.
Fleurieu Cranes has been operating for over 18 years, but the decision was made following the passing, in November 2021, of one of Fleurieu Cranes’ three original owners, Philip ‘Snowy’ Allen.
“I’d been General Manager with the business for nine years and following Snowy’s passing I was approached by the other owners to buy into the business,” Brandon said.
“Since that time, we’ve bought a number of assets to satisfy growth, along with refreshing the fleet to best service our customers with a focus on new equipment and technology.”
Fleurieu Cranes was started by Snowy and a couple of friends who both initially worked in the business and then left to focus on their own fields unrelated to cranes. The business began with a 30t capacity truck mount crane – and whilst this crane is no longer in the fleet, a picture of this crane is proudly displayed in their head office.
“Today, we are 130 people strong, having grown 25 per cent in the last couple of years. In terms of cranes, we have probably grown the fleet by a similar percentage and we have been freshening up the fleet too, which is something we have always tried to do. By refreshing the fleet, we offer our operational teams the opportunity to work with the latest technology whilst ensuring we’ve got the best fleet available,” he said.
Brandon goes on to discuss the profile of his customers, the industry sectors Fleurieu Cranes services and his team’s experience.
“We are fortunate enough to service Tier One companies, right through to mum and dad projects, we are not too proud to service that section of the market,” he said.
“We do plenty of infrastructure cranage typical work throughout South Australia, however we do quite a bit of work in the wind farm space as well. The Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1 is ideal for wind farm construction and maintenance. Obviously, in South Australia we’re well positioned to service a lot of wind farms,” he said.
“We are also exposed to the resources sector where we work for all the major players. We do a fair bit of mining related work, including project work and shutdowns, and we’re also in the renewables sector with solar farms and wind farms.
“People want to work for Fleurieu Cranes, we are like a family, we treat our people well and they in turn treat the business well. We invest time and money in training and upskilling our people which they value, and this leads to high retention rates,” he said.
“We have apprentices in our workshop, and years ago we had apprentices with boiler maker backgrounds in the field, but we’re not in that space now. We really focus our efforts on cranes and lifting with many associated value-add services. We employ people based on their drive, how they conduct themselves, we can train skills, that’s our philosophy,” said Brandon.
Fleurieu Cranes operates from a purpose-built facility with workshop capabilities.
“With our large workshop, we have sufficient facilities to complete all general servicing, maintenance and repair work, and all works necessary in managing major inspections for ourselves and others. We regularly work on cranes from other companies – you will see their cranes in our yard all of the time. Our workshop features four full time technicians, and each has some form of factory training,” said Brandon.
Brandon also discussed the renewal of the fleet and its importance for the business.
“In terms of brands, we have a mixed fleet, and we are continually renewing this through a dedicated fleet strategy. We operate Terex Franna, TIDD, Grove, Tadano, and Liebherr cranes. We ran a Demag AC350 for some time and we sold that crane, replacing it with a Tadano Demag AC300 which features 80m of main boom,” he said.
“We are always looking at the advances being made with technology and bringing this into our fleet wherever possible. The Tadano Demag AC300 is a great example of technological advancement, it’s charts compete well with the AC350 and in many places it exceeds it.”
“When you talk about wind farms and replacement of generators and that type of application on some of the lesser hub height wind farms around South Australia, it services them really well. It is more efficient to get there and more economical as well with less fuel burn,” he said.
Brandon goes on to discuss the process which led to the purchase of the Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1.
“I first saw the crane at bauma in 2019 where Liebherr unveiled the crane for the first time. Snowy and I had many conversations about the best configurations for our customers. Importantly, the Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1 was not a brand-new style of crane, it is effectively the evolution of the LTM 1500-8 axle crane.
“I believe that when a new crane is a result of this type of evolution it just gets better. Whenever a totally new model is released with a new shape, engine, new everything, there are bound to be bugs that require ironing out. Because the Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1 is a result of this evolution, I believe it will hit the ground running,” said Brandon.
Fleurieu Cranes has never been afraid to invest in new cranes explains Brandon.
“Ten years ago, we invested in the Grove GMK6400, which at the time was a big step-up for us. It has proved to be a very good lifter at height, and we bought that crane to service the wind farm industry where we’re changing out gear boxes in 80m hub height wind turbines. That crane did really well for us, and still does today in fact. The Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1 might seem like a big step, but it’s natural for this business to continue investing in what we see as the best fit for our customers’ requirements at the time,” he said.
He then talks about the personnel within Fleurieu Cranes and how they plan for major projects like mining shutdowns.
“We obviously have a pool of individuals whilst focusing our energies on having the same regular operators in the same cranes wherever possible. When you have shutdowns and 24 hour operations, that’s not always possible, but we certainly try and keep the teams familiar with the assets that we’re running.
“We also have a significant pool of casuals in the business which enables us to increase and decrease our workforce as we need. Within our workforce we also have a few female operators and riggers.
“One of our operators who had been with us for a long time introduced his daughter to us and she went on to become a great asset for the business. She worked on FIFO mining work for us and recently moved to Melbourne where she is now working for JYC,” said Brandon.
Brandon adds that he focuses on building the engineering and lift planning capabilities within Fleurieu Cranes.
“We have four engineers in the business, which sounds pretty top-heavy for our size, but we see that as really important. This investment enables our supervisors to stay out on the road and spend as little time in the office as possible.
“Our supervisors are also our safety people as well, so they’re out on site looking at tomorrow’s jobs but also managing today’s jobs, which is important. We actually run more supervisors per staffer in the state by far, probably double any of our competitors. We see this as a way to manage our safety and our people and also stay close to our customers,” he said.
A sustainable future and reducing carbon footprints are key topics for many crane companies, and it is no different for Fleurieu Cranes.
“About 12 months ago we made a decision to partner with Trees for Life and today we offset 100 per cent of fuel burn carbon emissions from all our cranes, trucks and vehicles,” said Brandon.
“Effectively the way that we achieve this is we contribute money to Trees for Life and they plant trees across the country. This is an initiative we’ve chosen to do, we want to lead the industry in this regard, not be pushed by government to do it,” said Brandon.
“We are also speaking to all the crane manufacturers and asking them what are they doing in terms of electrifying machines or green energy and what’s the best way forward? I’ve seen firsthand what Liebherr is doing in terms of having electric superstructures, however currently the necessary size of cable (volts or amps) makes that solution unrealistic on many of our sites.
“The next step is to look at hydrogen as a fuel source and I know all the manufacturers are working very hard on these concepts. Hopefully this new fuel technology won’t just be on new machines, it will be great if we can retrofit this to older engines as well.
“I was driving in Europe recently where they have green zones where only low or zero emission vehicles can enter; that’s the future and Australia is going to be adopting similar environmental policies, so if we don’t have these green vehicles and machines, we won’t be able to service customers,” he said.
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The South Australian crane sector is very competitive and the team at Fleurieu Cranes is comfortable competing with the best of them.
“I enjoy the fact that we have a competitive market, a healthy and competitive industry keeps everyone on their toes and service levels high. We are always working on projects in the city, large infrastructure works, and we are also working out bush, particuarly in the resources sector – including renewables.
“We compete with the likes of Max Cranes, they are a very good outfit including provision of most of the value adds like engineering, etc that we have.
“I’m happy to compete with them. It is, however, difficult when we compete against the smaller players as they don’t have all the background costs that we would have, but then that’s our selling point, isn’t it?” said Brandon.
“The future will include letting our people continue to flourish. For some time, we have been working on a strategic plan for the business.
“We tell our teams the direction in which we are headed and where we want to be, and we let our people take their natural direction to get there.
“Our business has grown over a long period not as a result of micromanaging our people, they understand and appreciate this style of management and respond accordingly,” he said.
