08.10.2015

Europlatform Copenhagen

The ninth Europlatform Access conference was held yesterday in Copenhagen with a surprisingly strong turnout, given the shortage of hotel rooms in the city this week.
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A good number of delegates attended

This year’s presentations were delivered by a diverse range of speakers, covering a range of subjects, including Xavier du Boÿs of Kiloutou talking about creating value from an powered access rental business. The methods included a wide range of the usual ingredients, such as choosing the right equipment, pooling specialist machines such as aerial lifts on a regional basis to maximise utilisation, keeping operational costs to the minimum, charging properly for services such as transport, insurance, and damage etc.. and selling the machine at the optimum age, which can vary with each unit. One surprising comment concerned depreciation, which he said should be purely an accounting issue not related to the operational side of the business and is totally unimportant when it comes to creating value.
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Xavier du Boÿs of Kiloutou

Nick Selley of AFI spoke on customer service and highlighted how the company is taking this aspect of its business far more seriously, with the appointment of a customer service director. He also said that the company benchmarks itself against what the major UK supermarkets are doing – or not doing – in this area. One chart he showed highlighted how the two leading companies – Waitrose and Aldi are at the opposite ends of the spectrum as to what they offer – and charge. But both are crystal clear on what they offer.
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Nick Selley of AFI

Petri Paavolainen of Dinolift had a tough challenge talking about the digitisation of the market. He focused mainly on the benefits that are available by increasing the connectivity of machines and additional features that modern systems can offer. He acknowledged that this was to some extent counter to some trends in the rental market to make machines simpler or “to decontent them” in the words of the person who asked the question.
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Petri Paavolainen of Dinolift

Rupert Douglas-Jones of IPAF highlighted the fact that the latest accident statistics show that over 35 percent of all incidents reported – 152 out of a total of 428 - are down to delivery drivers many of them occurring during unloading or loading and majority of them on the rental companies premises! A new draft IPAF document dealing with this subject will be published shortly for comment and input.
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Rupert Douglas-Jones of IPAF

Dino Leistenschneider of Ramirent spoke animatedly on Total Cost of Ownership, running through all the obvious issues that affect this, with plenty of charts, jargon and observations.
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Dino Leistenschneider

Søren Olesen of Danilift gave a nostalgic look at the development of the truck mounted lift market in Denmark, from simple Falk Schmidt and Simon machines through, Denka, Bronto and the latest trend towards 3.5 tonne lifts of today
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Søren Olesen of Danilift with some of his early machines

Karel Huijser of JLG gave one of the more stimulating - or should that be entertaining - talks of the day, as he spoke of the benefits that competitors might gain by co-operating on some developments for the benefit of the market, while still slugging it out in the marketplace. He also highlighted how interrelated the market is, and spoke of his company’s approach to keeping Power Towers alive and well with its own heartbeat but as part of JLG.
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Karel Huijser of JLG

Other speakers included Euan Youdale of KHL, running over the latest rental market statistics and Denis Andreev of the Russian National Rental Association NAAST, speaking on the Russian aerial lift rental market. The presentations from the conference will be available on the IPAF web site from Tuesday.