Public spending holds up more cranes in Melbourne than other cities
Victoria’s reliance on public spending in construction has been laid bare by the latest crane count by consultancy RLB. It shows that almost one-third of the cranes on Melbourne’s skyline are from once-off, mainly infrastructure, projects that will not be replaced when they are completed.
The third-quarter 2025 RLB Crane Index shows tower cranes and large so-called crawler cranes employed on road and rail projects, public housing, health and education projects rose by two, to make up 60 of Melbourne’s total of 199 in the third quarter – just over 30 per cent of the deployed fleet.
The higher proportion of publicly funded projects compared with either Sydney or Brisbane poses a greater risk that construction in the Victorian capital will decline as the slew of mainly infrastructure projects comes to an end.
“The danger of when all these projects finish is what’s next?” said Oliver Nichols, RLB’s director of Oceania research and development.
“If the sentiment is not quite there from the private sector, that could potentially leave a bit of a hole. Melbourne is in a bit of a possibly weaker position than some of the other states, while also grappling with [high] construction costs.”
With as many as 46 cranes deployed on Melbourne’s controversial $26 billion North East Link road-and-tunnel project alone, the southern state will require a massive pick-up in private projects to keep activity ticking over when the current crop ends, Nichols said.
In Sydney, by contrast, the number of cranes on government-sponsored projects fell to 29 of the city’s total 370, or just 7.8 per cent, compared with 11 per cent six months earlier. In Brisbane they accounted for 10, or nearly 14 per cent, of the 73 cranes on the city’s skyline, up from 9.2 per cent last time.
In Brisbane – where the state government will be rolling out new infrastructure both for the 2032 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games and a $17 billion public hospital capacity expansion – the proportion of government-sponsored cranes was likely to increase further, Nichols said.
There are separate signs that residential construction is picking up. Nationally, cranes involved in home building rose from 484 to 498, and that was the case in Melbourne, where total residential tower cranes rose in the latest six-month period to 106 from 90.
Residential cranes also picked up in Adelaide, Brisbane, Central Coast, Gold Coast and Wollongong, but they fell in Sydney – from 221 to 210 – and Canberra (from 15 to 9), and ticked lower in Newcastle, Perth and Sunshine Coast.
While commercial construction is generally weak, some sub-sectors, such as data centres, are booming.
The national total of cranes deployed on data centre projects rose by three from 29 to 32 – as 16 cranes came down and 19 new ones went up – the report shows.
That sector is likely to keep growing. A recent CBRE report said Australia’s $30 billion data centre sector was likely to grow 50 per cent in value to $46 billion over the next four years.
“That’s one of the growth sectors, compared with something like commercial, which is struggling at the minute,” Nichols said. “That pipeline of commercial is not there.”
A data centre project also made up Australia’s largest single-site deployment of cranes in the most recent count, with six fixed cranes at builder Hickory’s 369 Palmers Road data centre project site for Stack Infrastructure in Truganina, in Melbourne’s outer western suburbs.
The builder is currently delivering two additional buildings for Stack’s MEL01 facility, where it has already completed two, said Hickory managing director George Abraham.
Data centre projects ran to a strict schedule that made them easier for vertically integrated builders such as Hickory to meet, Abraham said.
“Delivering an apartment building will generally be on time,” he said.
“But the consequences of not being on time aren’t as dramatic as for a data centre. Delivery dates are non-negotiable.”
NSW remained the largest location of cranes – at 48.8 per cent of the national fleet – with a total that ticked slightly lower, to 370 cranes from 373 six months earlier.
The Western Sydney Airport at Badgerys Creek accounted for the most cranes, with six, followed by Mirvac’s Harbourside project at Darling Harbour, with five.
Victoria, the second-largest location, made up almost 24 per cent of the total.
Southeast Queensland accounted for 18 per cent of all cranes in the country, with Brisbane at 73 (up from 65), Gold Coast at 67 (up from 59) and Sunshine Coast at 13 (down from 18).
