Our journey to the smart factory ...

Networked, data-driven processes and intelligent systems are increasingly shaping the industrial world – and at the heart of it is the smart factory, a highly automated production environment organized according to lean principles, combining modern automation technologies with digital tools.

A giant in a (not so) small format

When a Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1 raised its mighty boom in 2025 at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne, a murmur rippled around the four-metre-high hall. After months of painstaking work, Peter Howald is bringing his technical masterpiece to life.

The “cranosaurus” from Hambach

The Hambach open-cast mine harbours a cranosaurus: a very old creature that, with almost 30 years of hard work behind it, puts many things in the shade.This antique appears to have supernatural powers, still moving its powerful yet nimble frame to this day.

Award-winning safety

When heavy machinery ensures greater safety on the road: Liebherr-Werk Ehingen GmbH has walked away from this year’s ESTA Awards of Excellence with the prize in the “Safety” category. This prize was awarded for the introduction of driver assistance systems in mobile cranes – a new development in the industry.

Operatorʼs manual redesigned

Itʼs not just our cranes that are getting an update with LICCON3 – the documentation department has also undergone a general overhaul. Tobias Bergerʼs team revised our tried-and-tested crane documentation, which also includes the operatorʼs manual. The content has been restructured and reduced to the essentials.

Nothing is impossible

Kazakhstan is one of the countries with the most resources in the world. Many cranes are also required for the construction and maintenance of conveyor systems. Recently, Tengizchevroil, one of Kazakhstan’s leading oil companies, added the powerful LTM 1650-8.1 to its fleet. Transporting the crane over 4,000 kilometres to its destination proved to be a significant logistical challenge.

Rolling and lifting

Riadh Tarsim is Managing Director of ATM Levage in Valenton near Paris. Founded in 1996 as a transport company, Riadh expanded the company’s range of services in 2008 to include crane hire. However, transport and lifting operations are not the 51-year-old family man’s only passion – he also enjoys top-class sport. We spoke to him about how to tackle challenges.

Pretty wild times

Was everything better in the past? Certainly not. Only different. We asked our former shipping manager Bruno Seele, company founder Josef Gerber from the transfer company of the same name and driver Heinz Zobel to tell us about crane transports to Iraq, Mauritania and the former Soviet Union. Here are a few anecdotes for you to enjoy.

Why don’t you become a hairdresser?

A generation of “Titans” is growing up in our steel construction division. For the first time, a trained female metalworker takes on the role of training mentor and passes on her knowledge to the next apprentice: 16-year-old Sina is a trainee fitter.

From lightweight to maximum performance on eight axles

Avoiding costly driving permits, driving over almost any bridge, preventing detours, and setting up the crane on the construction site without an auxiliary crane. This is now even possible with an eight-axle mobile crane! Liebherrhas developed an extremely simple, fast and economical solution for self-assembly of the telescopic boom for the LTM 1650-8.1.

From carpenter to model maker

What began over ten years ago as a hobby involving a small wooden boat has now become Irishman John Murphyʼs main profession. The trained carpenter has been working as a model maker since 2022, building a wide variety of construction machines to order and sending them all over the world.

New option for the LR 12500-1.0: SPMTs as a ballast wagon

The purpose of a ballast wagon is to allow a crawler crane with derrick ballast to drive on the construction site regardless of whether it has a load on the hook or not. However, as a ballast wagon is not used very often, it would be helpful if its components could also be used for other types of work. Our solution: using SPMTs as ballast wagon.

Wear-free

TraXon DynamicPerform proven in practice. Customer experience with the new TraXon DynamicPerform gearbox.

Girl power in open-cast mining:

Wasel recruits two female crane drivers

As good as new

Used cranes conquer the Brazilian market

A dozen for the energy transition

A dozen Liebherr mobile cranes working together – what a picture!

It all started with rough terrain cranes

Dear Readers, shall we take a short trip through time? Then let’s go back almost 40 years and take a look at our neighbour, Poland.

Four steps for a better tomorrow

Sustainability and climate change are hot topics at the moment. It is now more important than ever to develop greener drive concepts for vehicles to reduce CO₂ emissions, for example.

Liebherr cranes take the lead role

A great film, great courage and great cranes.

Berg Repair Centre – what’s new? What’s different?

It’s not just cars, cranes also require a regular check-up to ensure that everything is still in perfect condition and works smoothly.

In conversation

Stable and quick-witted? Then head for the crane industry.

Chile – a country with many faces

No end in sight… and we don’t just mean geographically. Chile, a country in South America measuring 4,275 km in length, is currently experiencing a booming economy and excellent prospects.

Katie Cranes

Katie Kelleher is leaving her mark in London. The crane operator and lifting technician has been involved in Crossrail, now known as the Elizabeth line, Tideway, nick-named the super-sewer and the High Speed 2 railway.

An ode to the crane

What do Liebherr customers and personnel actually do in their spare time? Some of them have crane interests. For example, building an LR 1750 out of wood.

“There is fantastic wind blowing here.”

Andersen, a Danish giant who, at the age of 66, is still extremely dynamic and normally very cheerful, is the jack of all trades in Østerild, a rambling test site for offshore wind turbines. A man who appears to have construction site blood running through his arteries – Crane Supervisor Espen Andersen.

Standing steady in the wind!

Our Liebherr engineers in Biberach, Ehingen and Nenzing have made a large number of new mobile and crawler cranes more stable for use in stormy weather. We are delighted to have therefore won the award in the safety category for our development of special “WindSpeed load charts”.

“We’re glad we could help”

Uwe Langer is an acknowledged expert when it comes to particularly tricky hoisting work. The boss of crane and heavy haulage contractor Riga Mainz and his team have managed to meet a whole series of challenges by developing several new or particularly smart solutions.

"We will never forget that trip!"

Our fitters have seen a thing or two – jobs have taken them to the far ends of the world where they have experienced extreme heat and snowstorms, unusual cuisine and some hotels which really do not deserve the name. The coronavirus pandemic has taken them one step even further.

The Enablers

The coronavirus pandemic has now had a firm grip on our everyday lives for around a year and a half. This grip has differed between countries and the waves of the pandemic have occurred at various levels. Nevertheless, during 2020 around 2000 mobile and crawler cranes still left our crane production plant in Ehingen and were delivered to customers all over the world.

Crane history in the Persian Gulf

Much more than a geographic description – the land of the morning sun. It is where the sun comes up, looking from Germany at least, and twinkles – in the classic One Thousand and One Nights and at the end of the last millennium when Burj Al Arab, which cost 1.5 billion US dollars, drew international attention to itself in 1999.

A catalyst for positive change!

A Leica in her hand, safety belt around her chest and long blond hair under her helmet – Ashleigh Kaliszuk travels the length and breadth of Canada for crane jobs. Sometimes as a crane operator, other times as a photographer. We found out about the young Canadian through her blog and invited her for a chat.

The Netherlands – an El Dorado for crane fans in Europe

On average and relative to the population, there are more than twice the number of our mobile cranes on the roads and sites of the Netherlands than anywhere else on the continent.

The City That Never Sleeps

Picking New York up one lift at a time, Liebherr mobile cranes are helping the city bounce back from adversity once again. Our mobile cranes are everywhere in the city that never sleeps - right through the very heart of it.

"Finally a bit of me time"

A watershed for the company – two long serving directors have left Liebherr-Werk Ehingen within just five months. The retirement of Dr Hubert Hummel and Mario Trunzer marks the end of an era. We had a very intense conversation full of power, plans and cranes.

A crane named Steve

The LTM 1500-8.1 is the best-selling crane on eight axles on the market with 600 of them in action around the world. It is always an eye-catcher when it is fully set up. Sometimes it even becomes an attraction – particularly if there are lots of passers-by who can watch the crane operating. One LTM 1500-8.1 has now even become famous. May I introduce ... Steve, the hero of a children’s book.

Fascinated by cranes, inventive and courageous

Our cranes encourage technically minded inventive people from all over the world to send us letters and ideas. And, with all Swabian humility, we are delighted to receive them. We received a very special letter and drawing a few weeks ago from Switzerland sent by Tim.

The original crawler crane from Liebherr

The Liebherr Group supplies a wide range of high quality products and services. Company founder Hans Liebherr laid the foundations for this successful concept by diversifying his company at an early stage. The start of each product line was marked by courage, creative spirit, confidence – and a concrete idea. The idea of the crawler crane is now more than 40 years old.

Woman power in the construction world

In the past, construction has always been dominated by men. But nowadays, it is not just men’s hearts which beat faster when they see an impressive construction or heavy haulage machine. Today, women are playing an increasingly important role in the construction sector – from crane operators to company owners.

Singapore – high tech in the glittering metropolis

During the 1980s, the Liebherr Plant in Ehingen took its first major steps in the process to transform itself from a reasonably sized crane factory to a global player with pioneering mobile crane technology. During the same decade, the smallest of the four so-called Tiger economies, Singapore, took a massive leap forwards and became a significant financial centre for world trade.

The record-breaking large crane

“This is the best crane in the world”, is how Uwe Langer described the LTM 1500-8.1, when he took delivery of the 500th crane of this model in March 2016 at the Liebherr plant in Ehingen. There is no dispute that the LTM 1500-8.1 is the most successful large crane of all time. Twenty years later, we wanted to take a look back at crane history with some of the people behind its success.

Kings of the island

The Acropolis in Athens, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Palace of Knossos on Crete are just three of the 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Greece. Today construction is still taking place, albeit on a slightly different scale – Greece has been heavily reliant on wind energy for ten years. One of the main players in the industry is a small Greek family run company. Welcome to the Marnelakis home on Crete.

Cranes on tour

On 27 June 2017, we received an order from the Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) to deliver a total of 71 armoured mobile and recovery cranes worth around 150 million euros.

Verified clean

A series of tests conducted with TÜV NORD and engineering partner IAV recently proved that even large vehicles, such as our 5-axle LTM 1160-5.2 with a road weight of 60 tonnes meet the high onroad requirements of the Euro VI c standard.

Production at record levels

In 2018, the Liebherr Plant Ehingen set new records in terms of turnover and sales – we have never manufactured as many cranes as we did last year! In total we supplied 1831 new cranes to customers in more than 80 countries. That was a mammoth task for our staff in Ehingen and in our worldwide sales and service organisation.

Technical progress and entrepreneurial continuity the recipe for success

In the 50 years of the company’s history, Liebherr in Ehingen has only had two Technical Directors. This is an example of entrepreneurial continuity – a feature to which Liebherr has always attached a great deal of value.

Digging deeper: How did the Liebherr spider come about?

October 2017, a new email from his line manager popped up on the screen, looking for ideas for a technical highlight and eye-catching display for the customer days in 2018. At the same time, structural engineer Thomas Stangl reviewed the highlights of previous customer days in his mind’s eye: The crane mobile with three suspended crawler cranes and the M sculpture with two rotating LTM 1750-9.1 cranes standing on their heads.

New ways: The digital mobile crane licence

Digital mobile crane operator training is a joint product from e-learning production company Krassmann Produktion GmbH, lawyer Dr. Rudolf Saller and Liebherr-Werk Ehingen GmbH. It was unveiled for the first time at the customer days in Ehingen in June 2018.

Customer service – challenges and objectives

Liebherr is well known for its good, reliable service. At the same time, the demands on customer service are rising steadily. Christoph Kleiner is the director responsible for global sales at the Mobile and Crawler Cranes Division. This means that he is also responsible for customer service.