Affected by factors such as the industry cycle downturn and insufficient downstream开工率 (utilization rates), China's domestic construction machinery industry remained in a cyclical trough in 2025. However, in the first half of 2025, the construction machinery market has already shown signs of recovery. Among the 12 major product categories included in the association's statistics in the first half of the year, only truck cranes, tower cranes, and aerial work platforms showed negative growth, while all other products achieved positive growth.

Among the products with negative growth, truck crane sales in the first half of the year fell 8.4% year-on-year, and aerial work platforms fell 30.7% year-on-year. Tower cranes, affected by the continued sharp decline in domestic real estate investment, saw a drop of 38%. In July alone, 410 units of various types of tower cranes were sold, down 26.8% year-on-year. Of these, 222 units were sold domestically, down 42.5% year-on-year; 188 units were exported, up 7.4% year-on-year. This inevitably makes industry practitioners worry: where will the tower crane market go from here?

Tower crane sales and rental prices both decline

According to the sales data published by the China Construction Machinery Association, the total monthly sales of tower cranes and domestic market sales in 2025 have both been declining year-on-year. Over a longer time span, tower crane sales have fallen for nine consecutive quarters since the second quarter of 2023.

In contrast to the decline in the domestic tower crane market, overseas markets have performed well. According to association statistics, in July alone tower crane export sales reached 188 units, up 7.43% year-on-year; cumulative exports from January to July reached 1,464 units, up 30% year-on-year, demonstrating a strong external demand pull effect.

On the other hand, the market保有量 (installed base) of tower crane equipment remains high. Data recently released by the China Construction Machinery Association shows that by the end of 2024, the保有量 (installed base) of major construction machinery products in China was 8.51 million to 9.27 million units, of which tower cranes accounted for 256,000 to 278,000 units. However, actual market demand for tower cranes is far below this scale, leaving a large number of tower crane devices idle.

In addition to new machine sales, the tower crane rental market is also struggling. According to the Tower Crane Rental Industry Prosperity Index (TPI) compiled by the Construction Mechanization Branch of the China Construction Machinery Association and others, in July 2025 the tower crane daily utilization rate was 57.2%, and the maximum lifting moment utilization rate was 56.9%, respectively 0.3 percentage points higher and 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous month; the July rental price index was 483.26 points, 38.19 points lower than the previous month and 110.04 points lower than the same period last year. Clearly, compared with the end of last year, although the tower crane rental rate has changed little this year, rental prices have continued to decline.

Why the tower crane market remains sluggish

The decline of the tower crane market is the result of a combination of factors. These factors include a single business model for tower cranes, changes in market demand, and increasingly fierce market competition.

For a long time, the business model of the tower crane industry has been relatively single, overly reliant on housing construction rental business. In the past, rental business accounted for more than 90% of industry revenue, and these rental businesses were highly concentrated in real estate projects. This single business model did indeed bring substantial profits to enterprises during the boom period of the real estate market. However, when the real estate market underwent deep adjustment, its drawbacks were fully exposed.

The real estate market has continued to be sluggish over the past two years. According to National Bureau of Statistics data, from January to July 2025, national real estate development investment was 5,358.0 billion yuan, down 12.0% year-on-year; construction area was 6,387.31 million square meters, down 9.2% year-on-year; and newly started housing area was 352.06 million square meters, down 19.4%. The sluggish real estate market has led to a low willingness among real estate enterprises to start construction, directly resulting in insufficient tower crane utilization rates and a decline in purchase willingness and payment capacity on the equipment demand side.

In addition to the drag from the real estate market, overcapacity is also a major challenge facing the tower crane market. At present, the tower crane market保有量 (installed base) is 256,000 to 278,000 units, far exceeding the market's carrying capacity. Tower crane equipment on the market is in oversupply, and equipment utilization is severely insufficient. According to statistics, in August 2025 the tower crane utilization rate was only 39.5%, indicating that more than half of tower crane equipment is idle.

A large amount of idle equipment puts enormous inventory pressure on enterprises. In order to destock as quickly as possible, enterprises have had to engage in fierce price wars, selling and renting tower cranes at low prices one after another. The result of this vicious competition is a sharp decline in tower crane profits. As mentioned earlier, the rental price index in July this year was 483.26 points, 110.04 points lower than the same period last year, yet the tower crane daily utilization rate even rose slightly. This situation of "stable volume but falling prices" indicates that tower crane rental profits are becoming increasingly thin, and the overall profit space of the industry is being further compressed.

Where will the tower crane market go in the future?

In 2025, sales of most construction machinery products have rebounded; excavators, for example, have achieved positive year-on-year growth for many consecutive months. In contrast, tower cranes have shown no improvement. This also makes tower crane market practitioners worry: when will the tower crane market situation also reverse?

It is probably difficult for us to give a definitive answer to this question.

To promote the stabilization and recovery of the real estate market, the state has successively introduced a series of policy measures over the past two years. Among them, in terms of increasing housing security, the government has, through monetized resettlement and other methods, newly implemented the renovation of 1 million units of urban villages and dilapidated housing, helping to improve living environments and meet residents' housing needs. However, we should clearly recognize that the relevant policies mainly focus on the renovation of urban villages and old residential communities, so new projects and newly started areas will most likely continue to decrease. Even if the real estate and construction market bottoms out, it does not mean that a new round of rapid market upward cycle like that after 2017 will reappear.

Given the continued sluggishness of real estate projects, expanding the application of tower cranes in other scenarios is also an important strategy for developing the tower crane market. In addition to the traditional building construction sector, tower cranes can also be applied in bridge construction, ports and wharves, petrochemical facility construction, and new energy construction, all of which will bring opportunities to the tower crane market. However, judging from current results, the help to tower crane sales is very limited.

In addition, the tower crane overseas market grew rapidly in the first half of this year, but compared with the huge decline in the domestic market, this growth is still a drop in the bucket and difficult to fundamentally reverse the overall decline of the industry.

From the sluggish real estate market to the slowdown in infrastructure investment, from the slowdown in economic growth to rising raw material prices, and then to policy regulation and higher environmental protection requirements, every factor is affecting the supply-demand relationship and price level of the tower crane market. In this complex and ever-changing market environment, tower crane manufacturing and rental enterprises need to continuously adjust their business strategies and improve service quality and technological R&D levels in order to actively respond to market changes and challenges.