Liebherr moves into expanded U.S. headquarters

Marcia Doyle Headshot
Updated Jun 16, 2020
Liebherr USA’s expanded campus in Newport News, Virginia.Liebherr USA’s expanded campus in Newport News, Virginia.

Liebherr USA opened a $60 million expanded campus in April, which will include facilities for the company’s administration, finance, marketing, product support and distribution services, among others.

The company, which is celebrating its 50th year in the United States, announced the 251,000-square-foot expansion in March 2018 and construction began in July.

Approximately 500 people work on the Newport News, Virginia, campus, which also features new repair shop and warehouse facilities, and a new training center and workshop. The existing four story administration building on the campus dates to the early 1970s and will now house employees of Liebherr Mining Equipment Newport News.

Dr. Torben Reher, managing director, Liebherr USA, says the expanded campus will help Liebherr better serve customers across divisions in multiple ways, including increased concrete pump production. The  campus also gives the company increased capacities in repairing mobile and crawler cranes and construction equipment.

“For example, we will now be able to do boom alignments for mobile cranes up to 750 tons,” Reher says. “Furthermore, the new shop will be a lot closer to our many customers in the Northeast region, which will lead to lower logistic costs.” The new shop is also equipped to handle Liebherr earthmoving equipment. “We experienced substantial growth in this area in recent years and have therefore invested in our internal infrastructure to keep pace with the demand,” he says.

The new training center and workshop gives Liebherr the ability to expand its dealer and dealer technician training, says Peter Mayr, managing director of Liebherr USA. “In our workshop, we will not only focus on pre-delivery inspections and standard repair work, but also recondition machines in bays allocated to complete this task,” Mayr says. The expansion increased the number of earthmoving repair bays from eight to 12.

Warehouse capacities have increased by 50 percent, and features a dual shuttle vertical lifting machine to increase small component picking speed and storage capacity. The receiving and shipping departments are separated to enable optimal material flow through the facility. During the move to the warehouse, Liebherr transferred more than 30,000 SKU-numbered items.