Kalmar Delivers Cranes to Uniport

Kalmar Industries has delivered two super post-Panamax ship-to-shore (STS) cranes to Uniport for its Waalhaven Pier 7 facility in the Port of Rotterdam. Initial operations have already seen the cranes achieving impressive handling rates including one four-hour shift where the production rate was 45 containers per crane per hour. The Uniport cranes have been built according to Kalmar’s modular concept: one basic crane design that can be adapted to suit the needs of many different operators. Not only can height and outreach be varied to suit individual terminals’ needs but so can speed, levels of automation and a host of other features. After looking at probable future developments in the Port of Rotterdam and in container handling in general, Uniport asked Kalmar to incorporate features into the design which really tested the degree of flexibility available within the concept. However, the design team at Kalmar were up to the task, explained Kees Derks, Sales Manager STS Cranes: “Pier 7 was originally built to handle bulk cargoes and the distance between the crane rails is a massive 70m. That wasn’t a problem but Uniport explained that it may, at some time in the future, want to move these cranes to a new terminal in Rotterdam’s future Maasvlakte where the crane rails are a more usual 100ft (30.48m) apart. Our design engineers were able to incorporate features that will allow the cranes to be easily modified should they need to be relocated. “Uniport has also been watching spreader manufacturers’ development of so-called tandem-lift spreaders, capable of lifting two 40ft/45ft containers simultaneously. It expects to buy such spreaders when they are available and are shown to be reliable. Consequently, it asked for a lift capacity of 80 tonnes under the spreader (or 100 tonnes on the ropes), again something that is incorporated within our modular design concept.” With an outreach of 53.5m, the Uniport cranes are able to handle post-Panamax vessels carrying containers up to 20 abreast. Currently, the largest vessels handled at Pier 7 are around 5500TEU and carry containers 16 wide but Uniport does expect to be handling larger vessels in the future, especially if the move to the Maasvlakte takes place. The two cranes are currently fitted with twin-lift Bromma spreaders and can achieve a maximum hoisting/lowering speed of 40 m/min at 55 tonnes, 120 m/min at 20 tonnes. The maximum trolley speed is 210 m/min.