Ibex Glbl Share Discussion Threads

[jonno1] 28/8/2009 12:50

Looking like it's nearly time to short this pig again, chilling article

[bluenose851] 09/5/2009 19:00

dont look good does it!!! i live in spain and its pretty slow at the moment

[spob] 09/5/2009 18:32

Construction cranes idle as Spain's building boom goes bust


Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Thomas Catan | May 08, 2009
Article from: The Wall Street Journal


JUAN Sancho Toro made big bucks renting out construction cranes during Spain's 10-year building boom. Today he has 800 tower cranes - and doesn't know what to do with them.

Crane cemetery: Banks and construction firms in Spain are trying to sell thousands of tower cranes idling and rusting away after a building boom collapsed. Picture: Bloomberg
"If someone calls, I'd sell all of them," Mr Sancho Toro says as he strolls through a sprawling boneyard of disassembled yellow, steel towers near Seville. "I'll even throw in the little dog my wife loves so much. I need to sell - that's the truth."

For the past decade, the construction cranes dotting the Spanish landscape were a symbol of the country's prosperity. Today, they're a painful reminder of its economic bust. On building sites all over Spain, lumbering cranes stand motionless. Many have ended up on banks' books after the construction firms that owned them went bust.

With no buyers at home, banks and struggling construction firms are looking abroad to sell the detritus of Spain's building bubble. In March, Canada's Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers held its biggest ever auction in Spain. Among the 2900 lots of items sold to buyers from 58 countries were cranes, trucks, mechanical diggers, tractors, trailers and concrete mixers.

Tower cranes - which are largely used for building homes, apartments and offices rather than infrastructure such as roads or bridges - have been particularly hit by Spain's economic downturn.

Rick Nichols, president of Terex Corp's crane division, says his company's world-wide crane sales dropped 29 per cent in the first quarter from a year ago. In Spain, however, he estimates that sales of tower cranes fell as much as 70 per cent. Even when they do sell, cranes are fetching one-third the prices of just two years ago, builders say.

At that time, with the global economy running full-tilt, crane manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand. Waiting times for some cranes reached three years.

Spain became one of the world's most important markets for cranes. At its peak in 2006, the southern European country started building 760,000 homes. That was more than half the number started in the US, which has a population seven times as large as Spain's.

In 2006, nearly a quarter of the cement used in the 25 nations then in the European Union was poured in Spain. Greenpeace estimated that Spain's coast, where sun-starved northern Europeans flocked to buy summer homes, was disappearing under concrete at the rate of three soccer pitches a day. Now, the crane graveyards across Spain are a reminder of how long it will take the country to recover. "We went completely crazy in Spain," says Manuel Sanchez, a dealer for equipment wholesaler Maquidemolex España.

Mr Sanchez now spends his time selling Spanish equipment abroad at a hefty discount. A couple of years ago, a midrange, three-year-old construction crane sold for about €45,000 ($79,850) in Spain, he says. Now, they go for €15,000 - less than the price of many new cars.

Spanish crane-builder Construcciones Metalicas Comansa says it has seen sales of tower cranes in its home market plunge more than 90 per cent in the past two years. Liebherr International, a German company that sold 900 cranes in Spain in 2006, hasn't sold a single unit this year, says Mr Sancho Toro, who acts as the company's dealer. Both companies continue to export cranes abroad, albeit at a much slower pace than in years past.

Once booming places like Dubai are seeing similar surpluses, making it harder to find foreign buyers. "People aren't letting assets sit idle, so they're trying to sell them to other markets," says Terex's Mr Nichols. "Unfortunately, all markets are down."

Jeroen Rijk, a manager for Ritchie Bros, which organised the March auction, says 90 per cent of the cranes that are sold are being shipped to countries in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Mr Rijk is facing another problem - his 25-acre lot is too small to fit all the machinery Spanish construction companies want to get rid of.

Ritchie Bros has no minimum reserve in its auctions so Spanish sellers have to take any price they can get. They don't have much choice - dealers say construction equipment loses value faster than a used car, so keeping it in warehouses isn't an option.

That's the grim situation facing Mr Sancho Toro. Of his 800 cranes, more than half are inactive, and he's renting the rest out at half the price he did a year ago. Last year, he was renting a fairly typical midrange crane for €1200 a month; now it fetches €600.

Mr Sancho Toro has had to lay off 100 of his 180 staff, and says he wants to end up with no more than 30 former crane assemblers, whom he will retrain as installers of solar panels.

Mr Sanchez of Maquidemolex has an idea for the unsold cranes: "Maybe we should erect a couple of them permanently - as a monument to our madness."

[jonno1] 18/10/2007 12:00

This has to be a short here, record highs, with all their Banking and property problems...

[jonno1] 21/5/2007 09:15

just found this thread, looks like it has put on another 4500 points since the last post!, anyone short now?

[plit hurn] 03/2/2006 08:31

alf, morning...allegedly

quite a revelation last night while you were fiddling with your local indian....allegedly

it would appear that our trev, much agrieved about his failed attempt to destroy the original INDU thread and attract all poster to his new but failed INDU thread.......schemed to have Lee removed altothether....thus achieving his dream of world advfn domination.....allegedly

thinking that if that happened, the original INDU thread would be shut down.....MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (so to speak)...allegedly


realising he'd made a series of horrendous a blunders, he is now begging get advfn to reinstate Lee (naturally he will claim to be the innocent as per usuual)


unfortunately for our trev, has managed to clock up yet another failure....allegedly

trev is a judas of the first magnitude ..

all the best....allegedly !!!


OK off out now, I know its early....alledegly

[dell5] 16/1/2006 12:56

short this morning 10,875

[dell5] 15/1/2006 21:26

Up 500 points in 1 month, should be due a retracement.