IN THE DOCK
A COMPANY MAN A
ndreas Ritschel is a man who clearly loves his job. Even on holiday with his wife, cranes are still on his mind.
“Liebherr is a landmark in ports,” he says. “When you drive along the coast and see those towers sticking up in the skyline, it means something. When I am with my wife on vacation and I know there are mobile harbour cranes nearby, I have to go there to take a selfie in front of them. “It took my wife some years to accept that this would be a part of our vacations, but now she loves it – often she is the one to see the cranes first and suggest that we go to see them.” Andreas has spent most of his 13-years with Liebherr in sales roles but originally had intended to follow a much more technical career path. He started as a car mechanic in 1999, but after five years went to university. He studied mechanical engineering, achieving both a bachelor’s and master’s degree.
Engineering background A career in engineering beckoned. However, it began not with cranes, but with fish, in the port city of Rostock on Germany’s Baltic coast. “I was looking for a topic for the final part of my master’s degree,” he says. “I went to a production facility here in Rostock with the idea of developing a machine that defrosts frozen fish. I asked around the fish processing plants for permission to look at their daily operations. One said yes, provided I worked for six hours per day on the lines, with my shifts starting at 5am. The other two hours per day I could go around and ask questions.” Impressed with his work, the company
offered him a job as a project manager for developing a new salmon smokehouse in Rostock. “This was my entry into project work – I was on a construction site, talking to lots of different people and various suppliers, in order to align
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Andreas Ritschel, general manager, sales, Liebherr Maritime Cranes.
several tasks at once. I ran this as a technical manager, so this was the step from being in front of a computer to talking to people.” At this time, Liebherr was planning significant investment in mobile harbour crane production at Rostock and offered him a similar role. From there, he was headhunted for a
sales role after impressing management with his communication skills. “In terms of the skills for sales, I was not the one who saw it,” he says. “They saw that I had good communications skills as well as the technical background and approached me. It was not my original plan, but it was absolutely the right decision for me. I never saw myself sitting behind a desk, in front of a computer. I really like to be in touch with people.” Promotions quickly followed, including regional sales roles in the US and central
Andreas Ritschel shares his journey from car mechanic to general manager of the mobile harbour cranes sales department at Liebherr Maritime Cranes – and why he takes time out from his vacations to visit port cranes.
Europe, the deputy general manager of sales for almost three years before taking on his current role in February 2024. “My general background helped me to understand the products, the full complexity of the machines and the customer’s needs,” he says. “I believe it is the best basis for doing this job, as it helped me a lot to understand where our customers are coming from – and when I talk to their technicians in the port, they know I know what I am talking about.”
Changing conversations After more than a decade in sales, he has noted a significant shift in customer conversations. “When I started 12 or 13 years ago in sales, the conversations were different,” he says. “Back then it was all about price of the crane and container output per hour or how many tonnes of bulk per hour. Of course, we still talk about those factors a little bit in our discussions, but there are other priorities also.” Today, that priority is sustainability. “Back in 2015, when I talked to a CFO or CEO about electric drive, they would ask about how much it would save them in energy costs compared to diesel. This has completely changed and it is not really about the money anymore; it is all about saving emissions. “This is a genuine change in the mindset of our clients. The demand for electrification has increased by 300–400% in the last few years and it now accounts for about half of our cranes sold.
“All equipment in the port, from reach
stackers to RTGs, are now moving to electric. Electrification comes to the port anyway due to demand for ship-to-shore power for ferries and cruise ships. We have to electrify the pier, so why not use this power for the cranes as well?” For Liebherr, its targets are versatile ports rather than container terminals. “The mobile harbour crane is like a Swiss army knife, you can do everything with it,” he says. “If a port
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