Exports of steel through Tees Dock in northeast England have rocketed following Corus\u2019 refocusing of Teesside Cast Products as a slab exporter and the signing of a ten-year offtake contract with a consortium of international re-rolling companies. Corus will export at least 78% of its annual 3.3m tonne output, and it is all going through PD Teesport’s facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have ramped up exports so that this year it will be 2.5m tonnes,\u201d says PD Teesport\u2019s commercial director, Trevor Meredith. \u201cWe are now handling 200,000 tonnes of slab a month \u2013 and we used to do that in a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did we do this? First, we looked at port capacity in terms of berthing capacity, handling equipment and getting the workforce up to speed in terms of doing this on a monthly basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
PD purchased two Gottwald 330 EG mobile harbour cranes \u2013 the second of which also happened to be Gottwald\u2019s 1,000th sale of a mobile harbour crane. \u201cHigh handling rates,long lifetime and extraordinary versatility were the main reasons for PD Teesport choosing the HMK 330 EG, a four-rope crane version of our best-seller, the HMK 300 E,\u201d says Gottwald spokesman Peter Klein.<\/p>\n
To handle the slabs from Corus, the cranes are equipped with chains and lifting beams,and were built to handle loads up to 63 tonnes at a radius of 35 metres \u2013 so they are able to lift two steel slabs weighing 30 tonnes each. In addition, the distance between the crane\u2019s axles was adapted to allow for the quay\u2019s characteristics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have specific requirements because of the construction of our quay deck,\u201dsays Mr Meredith.\u201cIt is a piled structure and capped with the quay. Because of the quay loadings and the fact that we are lifting two or three slabs totalling 60 tonnes into the vessels on a regular basis, getting to the top level of the crane\u2019s range on a regular basis, we had to have a specially designed chassis, which evenly spreads the loads over the piles.\u201d<\/p>\n
When PD started out on the new export contract with Corus, the expectation was it would be loading 11,000 tonnes-12,000 tonnes a day into ships,\u201cbut we are actually doing up to 15,000 tonnes-16,000 tonnes,\u201d says Mr Meredith.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have increased productivity significantly. We use forklift trucks with magnets to deliver the cargo to the ship\u2019s side \u2013 the advantage of magnets is that you need less dunnage separating the slabs and less manpower interfacing with the goods,therefore from a health and safety point of view it is a lot better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe load multiple beams instead of single slabs.We had to redesign the lifting beam and slings we use \u2013 we have a special chain type sling which is a combination of six or seven small chains, so it is relatively light but more robust.\u201dAlso, the ship stowing method has been modified to the modified California stow, filling the wings of the ship first to create a square.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a ten-year contract, which we are now two years into. The beauty is that if you have a ten-year contract, you can look at challenging your handling methods.You can spend money on training labour and getting them up to speed on that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if people are looking at short-termism, perhaps a 12-month or two-year contract, it doesn\u2019t quite give you the same incentive to make sure you have the most efficient handling process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teesport has the luxury of challenging its steel handling methods under a ten-year contract, as Felicity Landon finds out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1175,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}