Kalmar Strengthens STS Offerings
Cargotec’s Kalmar business area is strengthening its global presence in the ship to shore (STS) cranes market by commencing STS production and engineering in Asia. Until now, Kalmar’s STS cranes have only been offered to the European market.
Jorma Tirkkonen, President, Kalmar Container Crane System Division, Cargotec said “Our customers have asked us to consider delivering STS cranes to terminals outside Europe. We decided that now it is a good time to target increased volumes by starting to offer our STS cranes in all continents. The decision supports our strategy of growing our business and presence in the Asia Pacific region and the Americas, where we also have a strong local service network for our customers. Naturally we also value the lower production costs in Asia that makes it possible for us to maintain our competitive pricing.”
As a consequence of starting production in Asia, the focus of the Kalmar STS unit in Rotterdam is changing from manufacturing to become a crane competence centre. The competence centre supports Kalmar globally with marketing, sales and product support as well as customer specific engineering. The regional organization in Europe continues to provide spare parts and services including maintenance, inspection and training.
The new global approach to manufacturing has led to a number of improvements to the product design. Jorma Tirkkonen said “We have changed our cranes so that it is easier to make the final assembly on the customer’s site. This makes transportation simpler and less expensive. Some customers may still need to have the cranes fully assembled before delivery, especially if they lack space for assembly at the terminal, but most will value the cost-effective logistics.”
All Kalmar’s STS cranes will be delivered with a new Kalmar crane control system that includes the crane’s controls, crane management and fault diagnostics. Over the years Kalmar has delivered more than 100 STS cranes to Europe under the brand names Kalmar and Nelcon.
Recent deliveries include two super post-Panamax cranes with an outreach of 24 containers to the MSC Home Terminal in Belgium, four Twin-Lift post-Panamax cranes to Finnsteve in Vuosaari, Helsinki and two wide-span monobox design STS cranes to Rotterdam Shortsea Terminal (RST) in the Netherlands.
