Liebherr family business: Russian business during the war

Several cranes on the factory premises of the manufacturer Liebherr

The Swabian company does not report how much sales it makes in Russia.

(Photo: dpa)

Stuttgart Russia is one of Liebherr’s most important markets. The large family company manufactures construction machinery, aircraft parts and household appliances with 50,000 employees worldwide. The Swabian company based in Switzerland does not report how much sales it makes in Russia.

Liebherr employs around 2,000 people across the country, including in two production plants near Dzerzhinsk in the Nizhny Novgorod region and in a sales and service company headquartered in Moscow. Liebherr operates three service locations with spare parts warehouses near the border with Ukraine.

Once a year, the Liebherr family appears in public in an interview in the group’s annual report. In addition to the siblings Willi and Isolde Liebherr as co-heads of the board of directors, the third generation now also has a say, Willi Liebherr’s son Philipp, 36, and Isolde Liebherr’s daughter Stéfanie Wohlfahrt, 42.

“The humanitarian consequences of the war are terrible,” says Wohlfahrt in the interview. The family business donates to the Swiss Red Cross, among others, to support people in war zones and those fleeing.

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The family hopes that the fighting will end as soon as possible. “In the past few weeks, we have focused on aligning our activities in Russia with the sanctions that have been imposed on the country,” emphasizes Willi Liebherr, who is now 74 years old. “The medium and long-term effects on our business activities there are currently difficult to assess – but we expect significant economic consequences.” The war reminds Willi Liebherr of “times thought to be long gone”.

“Started the year with a very good order situation”

Last year, Liebherr had just reached the level before the corona crisis with an increase in sales of 12.6 percent to 11.7 billion euros. The annual result was also up on the previous year at EUR 545 million.

The family worries about business, but remains true to their entrepreneurial optimism despite the war in Ukraine. “We started 2022 with a very good order situation and, despite the changed framework conditions, we are cautiously optimistic about the rest of the year,” says Isolde Liebherr.

In the Ukraine, Liebherr works closely with long-standing trading partners who sell Liebherr construction machinery and household appliances locally. Liebherr has been active in Russia since 1965. In the past few weeks, Liebherr has also come under criticism for its connections to the Russian commercial and military vehicle manufacturer Kamaz. According to the family company, it developed a six-cylinder in-line engine together with Kamaz from 2014 to 2018. Since then, Kamaz has been producing these units on the basis of a license agreement. However, Liebherr still supplies gear hobbing and gear shaping machines directly.

Transformation of the drives

However, Liebherr did not deliver cranes for military use to Russia “even before the sanctions came into force,” emphasizes the company. These mobile and recovery cranes would only be delivered to the German Armed Forces and the Dutch Armed Forces.

Liebherr is managed jointly by the second and third generation of the Liebherr family. However, non-family managers run the operational business. Her focus is on creating the transformation to alternative drives. The group of companies works on hydrogen-powered combustion engines and their injection technologies as well as on electric drives.
The family-owned company has expanded its range of construction machines with electric drives to include two all-electric truck mixers. The first all-electric offshore crane is also in the works

In addition, Liebherr has prepared various product lines for the use of hydrogenated vegetable oils (HVO) as fuel. The Ehingen and Kirchdorf an der Iller locations already refuel all machines with the climate-neutral fuel as standard at the factory.

More: Working in a war zone: This is how German companies fare in Ukraine

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