The cranes – three with girder lengths of 35 metres and two at 27 metres – added up to a shipment of 2,100cu metres with an overall weight of more than 700 tonnes.
The shipment consisted of 10 girder sections, five large cases containing the trolley sections, a control cabin and 25 open-top containers.
“We part-chartered an OXL geared vessel, the Avatar, to call directly at Glasgow to take the cranes to Jubail, where we had to seek permission from the Saudi government for delivery by road,” says Project Manager Des Nott.
Allseas was also contracted to move three offshore cranes from the manufacturer’s site at Great Yarmouth, via the port of Felixstowe, to Shanghai.
The largest parts of the cranes, measuring nearly 5.6 metres, were almost too wide to be moved on UK roads. Road closures and special escort had to be arranged.
The entire shipment of 1,743cu metres of crane equipment was loaded as breakbulk on a deepsea containership.
“It provided the most cost-effective option, particularly as we were able to make use of a scheduled liner service and hence provide a guaranteed on-time delivery,” says Nott.
Tuscor Lloyds also opted for a containership – for its stable sailing schedule and predictable arrival at destination – for a recent move of eight massive cable reels from a manufacturer in the north of England to Qingdao in China. The largest weighed 86.5 tonnes and measured 4 x 3 x 4.2 metres.
The factory staggered the reels’ completion and shipping dates, while Tuscor Lloyds organised for the reels to be picked up and transported by road to Rotterdam to be consolidated for shipment.
The stevedores used a bed of flatracks to load the cargo as breakbulk on the containership, using a floating crane.
“Due to the large number of reels, the cargo loading had to be precisely planned around equipment availability and other cargo loading times,” says Tuscor Lloyds’ General Manager, Neel Ratti.
At Qingdao, the cable reels were unloaded and lashed on to flatbed trucks for transport to the final destination. The operation was overseen by Eastlink, a new company set up by Tuscor Lloyds in Hong Kong just a few weeks ago.
“Eastlink is a very small office at present, but from a standing start it has done well and should soon be self-sufficient,” says Ratti.
“It will handle anything within the region as well as Hong Kong itself. It is a first step and if it grows enough we will go into mainland China as well.”
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