Kalmar has a dedicated crane refurbishment team based in Rotterdam, where Gert Jan Doornewaard, vice president Services Crane Refurbishment, notes: “The extension of container handling equipment is a popular option these days for terminals wanting to achieve extra capacity and productivity without the cost of replacing existing equipment with new models.”

Kalmar involves itself in repairs, overhauls, modifications and modernisation as part of its refurbishment remit, while also providing additional services based around preventative and scheduled maintenance, equipment commissioning, parts supply and engineering.

Mr Doornewaard comments to Port Strategy that there are several factors driving both modernisations and upgrades, notably: the need to increase lift height and outreach because of the increasing size of vessels; a need to upgrade Programmable Logic Control (PLC) and frequency control; a trend toward automating operations; improvements to the operator’s cab; and safer,overall operation.

“The majority of requests for crane upgrades concern altering the lifting height and boom length – due to an increase in ship sizes – and making changes to electrical installations. Recent examples include the extension of the fatigue lifetime of ship-to-shore (STS) cranes, elongation of STS crane booms, increasing the lifting height of existing cranes, the provision of new light-weight trolleys, and the renewal of complete upper-assemblies, ties and booms.

“Kalmar has also increased the rail-span of existing cranes and heightened straddle carriers from threehigh to four-high specification,”says Mr Doornewaard. Kalmar can also undertake the refurbishment of electrical installations, varying from part renewal to complete overhaul. Interestingly, inadequate spare parts availability for old (DC) installations is often the motivation behind a customer’s decision to renovate.

He cites the recent example whereby Hutchison Port Holdings recently relocated two STS cranes from ECTRotterdam Home Terminal to Gdynia Container Terminal in Poland. However, the cranes, which had previously been operating on a 15-metre rail span in Rotterdam, needed to adapt to a 20-metre quayside rail span at their new home. So Kalmar, which had undertaken a threemetre height extension on the same units a few years ago,was called back in to do the new work.

Kalmar also recently assisted RST Rotterdam by extending the boom length of its gantry crane, which it had also raised several years ago, so that it could serve bigger ships.