ESTA President Fabio Belli has expressed cautious optimism about the prospects for Europe’s heavy transport and lifting sector – despite global uncertainties.
Speaking to the leading Turkish daily financial newspaper, the Istanbul-based Nasıl Bir Ekonomi – he said: “Geopolitical uncertainty is having a clear impact on investment decisions, supply chains and project execution. Customers are increasingly focused on energy security, resilient infrastructure and reducing dependencies on vulnerable supply chains.
“For ESTA members, this creates both challenges and opportunities: projects can be delayed or re-scoped, but at the same time there is increased demand for complex lifting, transport and installation solutions in strategic energy and infrastructure projects.”
Belli was speaking before ESTA’s 50th anniversary conference and dinner to be held in Amsterdam on October 23.
He continued: “Wind energy, transport, infrastructure and nuclear power markets are currently fairly strong. The wind industry in particular has been very robust. The installation of new wind capacity in Europe in the first half of this year was roughly one-third higher than the year before.
“The European nuclear market is also considerably healthier in 2026 than it was five years ago, thanks to a revival in political support, investment plans and new-build programmes.
“And Europe has at last woken up to the need to invest in our transport infrastructure – in part because the poor state of our roads and bridges was impacting our industries, but also thanks to NATO saying that they needed to be able to move their heavy equipment around more easily.
“Our industry is also seeing some interesting expansion in offsite construction which then requires heavy lifting and transport services to complete installation.”
He stressed that ESTA are not economic forecasters, but does develop a strong sense of the market from regular contact with clients and its own members, and he added that the changing nature of markets is impacting how projects are carried out.
“Customers are becoming more selective and are placing greater emphasis on cost control, schedule certainty and risk mitigation. This is creating more demand for early contractor involvement and integrated solutions rather than purely equipment-based services.
He added: “Projects are becoming more complex and customers are generally taking a more cautious approach to capital expenditure. We see a stronger focus on projects with a clear strategic or economic rationale, while some less critical investments are being postponed.
“At the same time, there is a growing trend toward modularization, larger and heavier components, and more sophisticated installation methods. This increases the value of early engineering input and integrated project execution.”
However, he warned that the industry does face considerable headwinds – notably the shortage of young entrants, especially crane operators and truck drivers – and the continuing plethora of petty and unnecessary regulations and permit requirements that differ from country to country, a situation that creates extra costs and delays and ultimately makes European industry less efficient.
And despite the guarded optimism, ESTA and its members are not immune from the impact of the international conflicts.
Belli concluded: “All businesses crave stability and the current situation is anything but stable – there are the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the volatile oil and gas prices, and the US government’s on-off imposition of tariffs.
“Such situations create huge uncertainty, increase costs, reduces the appetite for investment and squeezes national government budgets.
“Despite the limited upsides, the overall picture is concerning. In ESTA, we believe strongly in the value of different European countries – both within and outside the European Union – working together for the benefit of all. That is our core philosophy and the geopolitical situation will not change that.”