Palfinger
From the Alps to the Rust Belt
Photo: Palfinger
Palfinger is the world’s leading manufacturer and supplier of crane and hydraulic lifting technologies. Headquartered in Bergheim, Austria, the Palfinger Group employs some 11,733 employees in eighty-two companies and thirty-three countries. It also operates thirty-four manufacturing and assembly plants spread across Europe, Asia, and North and South America. In the 2021 fiscal year, Palfinger posted a record revenue of €1,841.5 million.
The company was founded as a metalworking and repairs workshop in 1932 by Richard Palfinger in the Upper Austrian town of Schärding. Despite being the world leader in crane and hydraulic lifting technologies today, it was not until 1959 that Palfinger constructed its first crane and not until 1964 that Richard Palfinger’s son Hubert blazed a path forward for the company by specializing in hydraulic, truck-mounted loading cranes.
Hubert Palfinger’s focus on the hydraulic crane ushered in the next phase of the company’s history, now referred to as the “crane era.” In 1968, Palfinger began serial production of its cranes and, over the next sixteen years, obtained a number of patents for its various innovations, such as the “mast planting grab” (1973), the “hinged main boom” (1976), or the “cable drum crab” (1977). The procurement of these patents coincided with the construction of new assembly plants, such as the plant in Lengau, Austria, and rising exports, with the export quota surpassing ninety percent in 1989.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Palfinger began to expand and position itself as a multinational company. The company went public with its stock market launch on the Wiener Börse (Vienna Stock Exchange) in 1999. Later that year, it took over its first foreign company, the French Guima S.A., which was the world’s second largest manufacturer of hookloaders at the time. Two years later in 2001, it also took over the Brazilian company Madal S.A. and acquired Tiffin Loader Cranes to form Palfinger USA, thereby establishing the company’s first foothold in the U.S. market.
Some U.S. consumers were already familiar with the Palfinger name, however, as the company has actually been operating in the U.S. market since 1991, when Tiffin Loader Crane became the exclusive dealer of Palfinger products in the United States. After acquiring Tiffin Loader Crane and forming Palfinger USA in 2001, Palfinger opened a new facility in Tiffin, Ohio. It expanded again in 2008 by taking over Omaha Standard, a market leader in truck bodies and pick-up tailgates, and in 2009 with the acquisition of Automated Waste Equipment.
Today, Palfinger USA has locations in several major markets in the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast and offers a full range of knuckle boom cranes that can be specially customized and fully mounted. Palfinger USA has manufacturing and assembly locations in Trenton, NJ and Cerritos, CA—in addition to the acquired Omaha Standard, LLC location in Council Bluffs, IA. Its North American headquarters is in Oklahoma City, OK.
In its 2021 annual report, Palfinger attributes the high demand for its products in the U.S. to increasing infrastructure investments with the strongest sector being the construction industry, followed by waste management and energy supply. According to Palfinger’s “Strategy 2030,” the company aims to further digitalize and become a “global technology company” by 2030, combining their hardware product with software solutions into an interconnected system, i.e. a single source of hardware and software. Despite pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions and rising inflation in the USA and Europe, Palfinger was able to achieve record revenues in 2021 and expects to grow further in 2022.
For more information, visit
https://www.palfingerusa.com