European Container Shipping Ports Favour Irish Built Handling Equipment

IRELAND – THE NETHERLANDS – SWEDEN – It is proving a good time for County Kerry based Liebherr Container Cranes with news that the company has recently been blessed with a rash of orders for all types of equipment. The largest container shipping facility in Europe, ECT Delta Terminal, has ordered seven of the company’s straddle carriers, whilst two ship to shore container cranes and two rail mounted gantry cranes will be heading to APM Terminals Gothenburg, joining a list of the group’s handling equipment found throughout Swedish ports.

Liebherr commissioned its first ship to shore container unit in Sweden in 1981 and today Liebherr container cranes can be found in Karlstad, Malmo, Gävle and Norrköping as well as Gothenburg. The latest Megamax ship to shore cranes have an outreach of 65 metres, allowing them to work on container vessels with up to twenty four boxes wide across the deck, a back reach of 25 metres and a rail span of 30.48 metres. The cranes will have safe working load of 65 tonnes under twin-lift spreader and contain a number of features designed to increase productivity, including a straddle carrier positioning system, vessel stack profiling and smart slowdown. Crane to ship and crane to crane anti-collision systems will also be installed.

In addition to the ship to shore cranes, two rail mounted gantry cranes will be supplied to the port. The cranes will stack 1 over 5 high, have a span of 30.6 metres and feature a wide leg and narrow leg outreach of 14.5 metres. Both the ship to shore and rail mounted gantry cranes will have Liebherr AC drive systems and the new Liebherr cranes will allow the port to increase capacity by 50%. Following extensive factory testing and assembly at Liebherr Container Cranes LTD in Ireland, the cranes will be shipped in large pre-assembled components for a quick and efficient installation and commissioning at the Port of Gothenburg.

The straddle carriers being supplied to Rotterdam are Liebherr’s SC340s model machines which will stack 1 over 2 high and are supplied with a 40 tonne Stinis single lift spreader. These straddle carriers will mainly operate in the landside interface zone, shuttling between the automatic stacking cranes and trucks. In addition the straddles will handle multi trailers for intra terminal transfer for onward transport by train or barge. The Liebherr straddle carriers are linked to a remote positional tracking system, providing real-time accurate information on the position and handling rates of containers within the terminal.

Last month we featured the crane constructor’s success in the Oceania region and our photograph shows two from a group of four Liebherr straddle carriers that have been recently commissioned at the Port of Lyttelton. A further four Liebherr straddle carriers and a Liebherr ship to shore crane are scheduled to be installed at the New Zealand port in 2014.