IC Tower Index 2023: largest tower crane-owning companies

Following the table’s second highest increase ever last year, of 27 per cent, this year it is a much more modest single digit rise. As a more ‘normal’ rate of increase, it suggests a return to stability. Having said that, it might well still be considered a strong increase, especially in that it was still a rise over an unusually large one the previous year. I wonder if it could possibly be the last one this strong for a while.

The total IC Tower index for the top 20 companies is 8,597,720 tonne-metres, up 7 % from the 8,029,698 last year, itself almost a third higher than the 6,313,014 of 2021. This year’s total is close to three times that of the 2,757,133 total seven years ago in 2016.

Looking at the top five, the percentage increase is even higher, up 8.3 %, from 6,231,069 to 6,749,115. This year’s total for the top five is almost three times that of the 2,348,914 total of 2018, just five years ago. At 78 % the total for the top five is also more than three quarters of the entire top 20 company totals.

Looking at the other categories, the total number of cranes was really the same as last year, actually down by just three units, to 24,105. Perhaps owners had a post-covid clearout of old and-or knackered cranes. It was a far cry from last year’s 1,205-unit increase.

The only category clearly lower than last year is the number of employees. There are 683 fewer people employed at the top 20 companies than last year. It was a 3.8 % drop from 18,073 people to 17,390 this year. Notably, there was also a similarly sized drop, of 500 people last year, from the 2021 total of 18,581 people.

The number of depots among the top 20 companies is up by 43 % from 323 to 463, largely due to an increase at one company, Shanghai Pangyuan, possibly due to a different way of defining a depot.