2007 will be ‘crunch year’

David Muntañola, sales director at General de Alquiler de Maquinaria (GAM), the fastest-growing rental company in Spain, thinks the access rental market in the country has several years of growth ahead of it before there is any kind of oversupply issues.

“We are still investing in access”, he tells AI, “The demand is growing every year...there is still a lot of building construction work going on.”

Like Gaspar Puig at Umesa (see this page), Mr Muntañola detects a fall in rental prices, but he is not unduly worried about surplus fleet. He says that 2005 and 2006 will be fine, and, if there are to be problems, it is 2007 that will be the crunch time.

In the meantime, the company has developed a fleet in excess of 2500 aerial platforms, adding 600 last summer with an acquisition in Madrid. It is also, like some other access renters, moving into more specialised truck mounts. It already has one 63 m Bronto and has ordered a bigger one, mainly for wind turbine maintenance work. (GAM isn't the only one doing this: Umesa has a 60 m+ Bronto and is thinking of adding an over 80 m unit from an as-yet-undecided manufacturer.)