The special transport vessel from China with the first four container cranes for the EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven on board docked at the quayside this morning.
The “Zhenhua 23” belonging to the Chinese company ZPMC, which departed from Shanghai on 6 January 2012, spent two months at sea transporting the world’s biggest handling cranes for Germany’s only deep-water container port. The container cranes are capable of handling vessels with 25 container rows on deck. Upon completion, a total of 16 of these giant container cranes will be lined up along the Wilhelmshaven quay wall. For the first 1,000-m section – to go into operation in August this year – eight container cranes have been ordered, the first four of which arrived at the Wilhelmshaven quayside this morning. A second container vessel carrying four more gantries is to depart from Shanghai soon. The route will take the cranes from China around the Cape of Good Hope and past the Canary Islands in the direction of the North Sea.
“ We view these container cranes as an investment in the future, ” said Marcel Egger, managing director of EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven GmbH & Co. KG and member of the EUROGATE Group management, on the reception tour for the imposing mega cranes. “ Currently the world’s biggest container vessel with a load capacity of 15,550 TEUs has 22 container rows on deck, while all other mega carriers, including the 18,000-TEU ship on order have 23 container rows on deck. Our cranes on the other hand are capable of handling as many as 25 containers on deck and are therefore suited to handling ships that are not yet on the market. Thanks to this investment, our terminal will be able to keep pace with future developments in ship sizes .”
The container gantries will be moved ashore one by one during the coming weeks and made ready for trial operation. Even once the giant cranes are up and ready, there is still work to be done, for example connection to the medium voltage power supply.
[mappress] Source: EUROGATE, March 6, 2012