Elevator industry stuck in the elevator

Russian elevator production is stagnating. The industry was able to regain ground after the crisis year of 2022, when production slumped from 32,000 to 22,000 units. Production rose to around 27,000 elevators in 2023 and 2024. However, a downward trend set in again in 2025. The Russian statistics authority Rosstat reported 25,400 elevators produced last year. Experts explain this with the decline in demand in the Russian construction industry. In addition, fewer core renovations of the housing stock were carried out across Russia. According to the Russian Lift Association (RLO), the number of elevators installed fell by 10% to 40,000 in 2025. There is often a lack of specialists to speed up the installation of elevators. Today, one elevator mechanic operates 100 to 150 elevators per month, whereas in the Soviet Union, one specialist was responsible for an average of 50 to 60 lifts, says Pyotr Kharlamov, Managing Director of the National Lift Association (NLS). Urgent need for renewal There is a great need to replace elevators. Russia plans to replace around 109,000 old elevators by the end of the decade. That is 20,000 units per year. According to market representatives, however, the industry currently only manages 13,000 to 17,000 lifts a year. The state is therefore setting itself an ambitious target. According to the Russian Ministry of Construction, there are 640,000 elevators in residential buildings across Russia. The targeted renewal rate accounts for 18% of this. According to the Russian Ministry of Construction, there are 70,000 elevators in Russia that have already exceeded the recommended service life of 25 years. However, they are still allowed to remain in operation until 2030. The recommended service life of elevators varies from country to country: in China it is 15 years. In Germany, 25 years is common, as it is in Russia. According to the plant safety report of the German TÜV association, more than one in ten elevators in Germany has significant to dangerous defects. Last year, 723,270 elevators were inspected nationwide. Increasing safety risk The number of fatal elevator accidents in Russia is worrying. Since 2018, 195 people have died in Russia due to defective elevators and 338 have been injured. Last year, there were 17 fatal elevator accidents. According to the National Lift Association (NLS), the greatest need for elevators is in the Samara, Saratov, Yaroslavl, Ulyanovsk, Murmansk, Astrakhan and Tver regions, as well as in the republics of Chuvashia, Udmurtia and Karachay-Cherkessia. The elevators in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod regions performed best. According to the NLS association, there is not a single elevator there that has been in use for more than 25 years. The state would have to provide 600 billion roubles, the equivalent of 6.4 billion euros, for the complete replacement, calculates NLS Managing Director Pyotr Kharlamov. An alternative to this expensive undertaking would be to replace individual components such as the drive and support belts of an elevator. "On average, the complete replacement of an elevator costs 4 million roubles, approx. 42,800 euros: The elevator itself accounts for 2 million roubles (21,400 euros), and uninstalling an old elevator plus installing a new one accounts for the same amount. All of this usually takes a month," explains Kharlamov. Next floor: Import substitution According to the Russian market data provider BusinessStat, imports of elevator systems in Russia fell by 3.5% from 18,400 to 17,800 units in 2024. After the crisis year of 2022, Belarus, China and Turkey significantly increased their elevator exports to Russia. Belarus was the largest supplier country in 2024 (53%), followed by China (35%) and Turkey (11%). 1% of imported elevator systems came from other countries. The withdrawal of leading Western industry leaders such as Otis, Kone and ThyssenKrupp from Russia left deep cuts in the Russian elevator industry in 2022. Production slumped by 30% that year. Russian manufacturers quickly changed course and replaced missing components from Western suppliers with deliveries from Turkey and China. In addition, components from the largest Western elevator manufacturers continue to enter Russia via parallel imports. This state-regulated procedure allows the import of necessary and hard-to-replace goods and services without the permission of the right holder. As of 2021, the proportion of foreign components installed in Russian elevators reached 30%. In the fall of 2023, the Russian Ministry of Economy announced that 80% of components in standard elevators now come from Russian production. However, market representatives admit that manufacturers are still reliant on imports for complex elevator systems such as those in skyscrapers. The Moscow elevator plant Shcherbinka is currently Russia's industry leader and has a market share of around 30%. Other important elevator manufacturers are Meteor Lift with its main production facility in St. Petersburg, Moscow Electrical Equipment and Lifts and the Serpukhov elevator plant in the Moscow region. Important industry representatives are According to the Russian Ministry of Economy, around 30% of elevator systems imported into Russia in 2021 came from abroad. Of these, 13% were elevators from the USA, Europe and other Western countries. 15% came from neighboring Belarus. One loss for the Russian market was the withdrawal of the US company OTIS Elevator Company, the largest elevator manufacturer in the world. Otis held a 16% share of the Russian elevator market until 2022. In the summer of 2022, the Group sold its Russian business to the Russian holding company S8 Capital, which then renamed the Otis subsidiary Meteor Lift. In 2023, further foreign market players - elevator manufacturers Kone from Finland, ThyssenKrupp Elevator from Germany and Schindler from Switzerland - left the field. Unlike Otis, however, their market share was low in 2021: Kone (3%), ThyssenKrupp Elevator (1.1%), Schindler (0.7%).  This article first appeared in the exclusive newsletter of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce Abroad The post Elevator industry stuck in the elevator appeared first on ostwirtschaft.de.