Friday round up: Crawlers demand, Mammoet’s offshore contract, bridge installation, IC Transport 50

With increased demand from infrastructure projects as well as a global shift towards renewable energy, the crawler crane market continues to grow, as do the cranes themselves with models being specifically designed for tall turbine installations and offshore projects. We started the week looking at recent milestones in the crawler crane sector, including Liebherr’s delivery of 2,500 tonne crawlers to heavy lift giant Sarens and Zoomlion’s record-breaking 3,600 tonne lifts.

Tadano’s CC 38.650-1 crawler at work in Switzerland. (Photo: Tadano)

On Tuesday we reported on a major contract win for Mammoet that will see it marshal giant tubular steel foundations for RWE’s Nordseecluster A and Thor offshore wind farms, two of the largest in Europe. Mammoet will lift and move and otherwise handle more than 100 XL (6 to 8 metre diameter) monopile foundations for the offshore wind turbines.

Self propelled modular transporter (SPMT) is indispensable for offshore wind component marshalling. Photo: Mammoet

When Europe’s largest shipbuilding company Fincantieri decided to install a new bridge structure at the entrance to its Porto di Prà shipyard in Italy, the pressure was on to keep construction time to the shortest window possible. For Wednesday’s lead briefing story, Lucy Barnard found out how locally based Italian crane service provider Vernazza Autogru handled the lifting and installation work of the prefabricated steel and concrete bridge.

Photo: Tadano/ Vernazza Autogru

Using the data compiled from International Cranes and Specialized Transport’s annual IC Transport 50 survey, we identified the ten fastest growing specialized transport companies out of the world’s largest in the field. Some fleets have experienced pretty dramatic growth over the last year, and the companies and regions they operate in tell us a lot about the current relative strengths and weaknesses of regional economies.

Al Faris at work moving and loading out 19 modules, each weighing up to 950 tonnes, in Sharjah, UAE. (Photo: Al Faris)