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Felixstowe cranes collapse in high winds
03 Mar 2008
Two ship-to-shore gantry cranes at Felixstowe’s Landguard Terminal ended up in a mangled heap on the quayside at the weekend after a ship delivering three new ship-to-shore cranes to the port broke loose from its moorings in high winds and crashed into them.
The Zhen Hua 23, which was delivering the new cranes from Shanghai for Felixstowe’s Trinity Terminal, had been laid up at the Landguard Terminal in anticipation of the bad weather. However, it broke its moorings in the 80 mph winds in the early hours of Saturday morning (March 1), drifted southwards and hit the two cranes.
The Landguard Terminal was closed after the incident but was due to reopen for the collection of imports from Tuesday morning. “Obviously this will have a significant impact on what we do at the terminal because two out of the four cranes are down,” said the spokeswoman.
However, over the past few months the port has in fact been winding down operations at Landguard, where it handles shallower vessels, in preparation for starting the Felixstowe South deepwater expansion later this year.
“Trinity Terminal operations are unaffected by this,” she said. “We plan to move the Zhen Hua 23 to Trinity on Friday, where it will start discharging the cranes. These will replace three outgoing 1986-built Morris cranes.”
The two cranes written off at Landguard are between 12 and 24 years old. No one was injured, and an investigation is under way.
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