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Writer's picturecranehub

3rd long standing crane hire company to close its gates.

After 70 years of service to the Irish construction industry, W M Obrien crane hire is to close its gate for the last time.



From the information, we at Crane Hub have received all the staff will get redundancy and all suppliers to be fully paid up by November of this year. Several cranes have already been sold and left the company with the small fleet of trucks currently on the market.


W M Obriens was once the market leader in Cork and southern Ireland, having some of the largest cranes including an LG1550 and an LTM11200, but over the last few years has been rapidly declining within the industry.



But sadly in 2022 after losing all its wind farm work in America the company is now a shell of its former self, having only about 8 cranes left in the fleet With an LTM1300 leased from Van Adrigham being its largest crane and struggling to find operators in the local area the company just couldn't keep up with others like East Cork Crane Hire which runs an enormous fleet of modern cranes up to 750t



William Obrien senior was a true Irish entrepreneur, from selling boiled sweets when he was a young teenager to mattresses and onions. Finally, William found his calling and brought his first crane which was to lead him to become one of Ireland's largest crane companies till the big recession hit in the 80s and the company scaled back its operations. WM Obrien was still a big player within the Irish

And global crane business.



It's a sad day whenever such a long-standing family business closes its doors but the one good thing is Ireland's crane industry is booming at the moment so all the operators and staff will not be unemployed for long with some already having offers with other local companies.

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