Liebherr USA, Co. Headquarters Opens at Expanded Campus

Liebherr USA, Co. marked a milestone on April 6, 2020—the company formally moved into a newly expanded campus in Newport News, Virginia. The facilities house employees who work in administration, finance, human resources, sales, information technology, marketing, product support and distribution for nine different product units under the Liebherr USA, Co. umbrella.

The move, conducted with enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures in place to ensure the health and safety of the employees, contractors and the local community, caps a journey that began in July 2018, when members of the Liebherr family, company executives and Newport News city officials broke ground for the project.

Liebherr opened for business in the U.S. 50 years ago on October 6, 1970. The existing four-story administration building dates to the early 1970s and was 100 percent occupied. It will be retained to house employees of Liebherr Mining Equipment Newport News, Co. The move to the new campus comes as the company marks 71 years in business overall.

Approximately 500 people work at Liebherr’s Newport News campus. Many of them are now working in the new o. ice, repair shop and warehouse facilities at 4800 Chestnut Avenue in Newport News.

“Besides moving into a new facility, which is a highlight for our employees, what stands out for me the most is the message this $60 million investment sends to our customers,” said Dr. Torben Reher, managing director, Liebherr USA, Co. “Apart from investing in research and design for cutting-edge technology, we have a long-term focus for our business and the relationships with our customers. Thus, we want to grow together. Our new site proves our commitment to this approach.”

According to Reher, the new campus will help Liebherr better serve customers across divisions in multiple ways. The first is that it significantly increases production operations for concrete pumps and repair capacity for mobile and crawler cranes, as well as for construction equipment. “For example, we will now be able to do boom alignments for mobile cranes up to 750 tons. Furthermore, the new shop will be a lot closer to our many customers in the Northeast region, which will lead to lower logistic costs,” said Reher.

In addition, there is a new training center and workshop. “We will be able to expand our o_erings in relation to training our in-house dealers and dealer technicians, as well as provide this service professionally to our customers,” said Peter Mayr, managing director of Liebherr USA, Co.

The new Liebherr warehouse incorporates the latest safety features and provides a 50 percent increase in storage capacity. In addition, the warehouse also has a dual shuttle vertical lifting machine to increase small component picking speed and storage capacity.

In planning for the warehouse move, “the main focus was on minimizing any interruptions to our customer supply chain. The extensive planning and execution of the move limited the interruption to just five business days,” said Frey. “Customer impact was very minimal.”