The rent, ailed of a strong disequilibrium between offer and demand

During years, the sector of the construction was considered the economic engine of Spain and, in front of the boom inmobiliario and the increasing investments in infrastructures, the companies for hire saw in the desbordante activity of this market the main destination of his fleets. To tackle the wall of 800.000 houses that built annually in our country and make one of the networks of transport more modern of Europe, needed increasingly machinery in the works, playing the rent a predominant paper in this supply. But in these arrived the summer of the 2007, with the first symptoms of the crisis, and since the sectorial indicators began his particular collapse, that still has not come to an end.

There are data that are really significant in this sense. For example, the consumption of cement, fundamental material in the construction, reached the past month of October, figures in per capita consumption that did not see in our country from the year 1965, accumulating a descent of 70% from the maxima registered in full boom inmobiliario.

The edificación residential follows his free fall, with hardly 150.175 houses built in Spain from July of 2010 to June of 2011, what supposes a descent interanual of 47,7%. And if the analysis carries to the terrain of the start of new projects inmobiliarios, the registers are still more negative, since from July of 2010 and until June of 2011, initiated only 56.415 free houses. By his part, the rehabilitation, that for a lot of had to be the table of salvation of the sector, neither finishes to raise head and in fact, in the second quarter of this 2011, suffered a descent of 36,9% with regard to the same period of the previous year.

Regarding the civil work, this also is seeing dragged by the gravity of the crisis and by the self-evident will of the different administrations of recortar in these budgetary games to fulfil with the aims of deficit. The Ministry responsible for public works has employed with big hardness the tijera in this field, as it shows the fact that in the five first months of this year hardly had awarded agreements by value of 752 million euros, that compared with the 3.340 million euros of the same period of the year 2010 have supposed almost 80% less than investment. To this cut also have added the autonomic administrations, forced to diminish the expenses in front of the collapse of his income. In fact, in the budgets of the 2012 presented already by some regional governments, the descent of the investment in public work surpasses, of average, 13%.

This loss of weight of the construction in the national economy is bringing achieve consequences really negative, like the destruction of more than one million employments in the last four years. While in 2007 the sector absorbed the 13,3 % of the workers, in 2010 this percentage already had gone down until 8,9%.

But besides, this decrease of the activity is affecting gravely to the industries that in good part depend on the construction, between which finds the one of the rent of machinery. The fall of work in the works has been so fast and rugged that the alquiladores have not been able to adapt, with the same speed and intensity, his parks of machinery, what has originated a very upper offer to the demand and with this grave problems like an excessive tension on the prices or a permisividad in the abusive use of the machines, amongst other. In spite of the efforts realised by a lot of alquiladores to relieve and lighten his fleets, the true is that to day of today this disequilibrium follows existing.

A clear example of the readjustment experienced can find it in the rent of aerial platforms (Pemp). After the explosion lived by this machine during the years 90 and the start of the new century, that carried him to happen of the 568 units that contemplated the census of Anapat (National Association of Alquiladores of Aerial Platforms of Work) in 1995, to the 37.373 with which reached his ceiling in 2008, in these last three years the situation has invested entirely, with a progressive and stood out decrease of the park that carried him to finish the 2009 with 28.118 units and the 2010, with 24.224 units.

“Does not result easy to know which figure would balance today the offer and the demand of aerial platforms in Spain, but in general lines can say that if to the current park of Anapat add him 25% of the platforms of companies no associated, there would be a total park of some 30.000 units. I estimate that in 2012 can have a descent of 20%, by what could say that the park in the next year could be of some 24.000 or 25.000 machines, and this, with the descents that there has been in these years, does to presage that we could be already near of the balance between offer and demand”, signals Antonio Married, general secretary of Anapat.

Another sector that is suffering a strong readjustment is the one of the rent of cranes tower. Whereas the park attended by the associated of Fanagrumac (National Grouping of Alquiladores of Cranes Tower) in the year 2006 was of 16.046 cranes tower, in the year 2010 this figure already had reduced until the 2.289 units, what has had also a very negative effect in the level of occupation of workers, which finished the past year in hardly a fourth part of the volume of employment registered four years before. “In little time, have happened to attend the construction of 800.000 annual houses, to levels of hardly 120.000 houses to the year, what has comported a sobreoferta of machines that follows tensionando the prices”, indicates César Caudevilla, president of Fanagrumac.

Neither is extraneous to the gravity of the crisis the rent of self-propelled mobile cranes, machines very linked to the construction in all his segments: edificación residential to the hour to mount/disassemble cranes towers, construction of industrial ships, civil work in the elevation of big structures, etc.

Although from Anagrual (National Business Grouping of Alquiladores of Cranes of Public Service) do not have official data of the present mobile park today in Spain, his general secretary David Ruiz estimates that, from the start of the crisis, the number of cranes that have his associated has gone down in roughly a third, that is to say of the 3.000 units that could have these companies alquiladoras in 2007, has gone down to a volume of 2.000 cranes. The initiative that goes to take próximamente the Ministry of Industry to create a register with the mobile cranes that are presents today in our country will put more light in this section.

In machinery generalista do not exist reliable data on the total number of teams that conforms today the Spanish park (although from the confederation Confalq is working in this), but there are registers that yes can give an approximate percentage of the descent experienced, as for example that the skilled signature Hune englobara in 2007 a park of 34.000 units with the integration of the four companies that gave it life, and around the middle of 2011 his park had gone down until the 23.000 units.

In other activities alquiladoras the offer hardly has menguado from the start of the crisis. It is the case of the rent of the sanitary laptop, that keeps the same fleet of bathrooms in Spain from 2007 (some 25.000 units) although the demand has gone down until an average of 10.000 sanitary.

In parallel to the initiatives that have taken a lot of companies for hire to reduce his parks (auctions, skilled signatures in teams used, employment of international networks of purchase-sale…), these also have reduced or frozen the shopping of new machinery to his providers. And this sees reflected clearly in the available data contributed periodically by the association Andicop, with some figures truly reveladoras. For example, of the 2.576 miniexcavadoras sold in 2006 in Spain (many of them to signatures for hire), happened in all the 2010 to hardly 424 units. And in the case of the minicargadoras type “skid steer loader” (another classical product between the alquiladores), the fall has been still greater, since of the 3.190 machines of the 2006 happened to 342 units in 2010. Neither they save of it burns it other very linked products to the rent like the manipuladores telescopic (2.714 machines in 2007 vs 319 in 2010) or the compactadores tandem of less than 1,3 m of width (742 machines in 2007 vs 58 units in 2010).

By all the signalled up to now and known the bad perspectives that ciernen for the sector of the construction during the 2012, is not of extrañar that many of the strategic lines that are following the companies for hire in Spain go through the diversification, going in with his teams in new applications moved away of the traditional work. All this complemented by politics of optimisation of the parks that guarantee a high percentage of employment of the machines.