ELEVATORS: Hard competition on maintenance portfolio

Romanian elevators and escalators market is in sharp decline, following the path of the local construction sector. With a number of new equipment less than 1,000 units per year, this segment reflects objectively the low level of demand. The available data indicates that in Romania are installed between 40,000 units and 45,000 units, more than half being overcome by technical point of view. The recession seems to affect quite strong the analyzed branch and in the last years the decrease in deliveries was more than 50%. However, the  experts are quite optimistic about the prospects of development on medium/long term. Despite the absence of sufficiently clear signals indicating a particular momentum in this segment, on local market are present all the main global competitors in the field (Kone, Otis, Thyssenkrupp, Schindler and Mitsubishi). The fact that all these industrial giants are fighting for a greater market share demonstrates that a real development potential has already been identified, which will be exploited in the coming years. Another specific feature of Romanian market is explicitly linked to strengthen the service/maintenance portfolios of local subsidiaries. All this is a direct consequence of the low level of financial solvency of local beneficiaries, making to be unlikely the prospect of buying new equipment or upgrading the existing ones. Moreover, speaking of new construction, for a lot of low-height buildings, the architectural plans do not provide anymore special equipments to ensure the vertical traffic. On the maintenance market are authorized about 250 companies. Unfortunately, the national authority for regulation  (ISCIR) has not shown lately any interest for providing a honest competitive environment, in order to allow an optimal development of the field. Attention is directed to satisfy the own interests of ISCIR, so that, instead of concentrate the activity towards the harmonization of local legislation with European standards, most of the attention is focused on actions to develop more bureaucracy of authorization system, with zero effect on ensuring the security for beneficiaries.