CONTAINER & CARGO HANDLING

Down the Mississipi to the Gulf of Mexico

21 years ago

Gottwalds Andreas Moeller explained to PS how the HPK 330 EG harbour pontoon crane – a dedicated solution for St. James Stevedoring Companys mid-stream operations on the Lower Mississippi – will hopefully prove a winner, at least in shallow and sheltered waters: ” We see a lot of scope for this application, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, for example on the Mississippi up to Baton Rouge, theres a whole bunch of applications. The machines are relatively old up there. With this new technology we think we can get a foot in the door.”

Gottwald HPK 330EG harbour pontoon crane in the Mississippi

Speaking of projects in the Caribbean, he says: “Right now the application is for rivers and shallow coastal waters. But the bigger Suezmax and Capesize vessels don’t call at the ports of Venezuela and Columbia, they load and unload up to three miles offshore.

These vessels used floating cranes that looked like dinosaurs – very old equipment up to 20 or 25 years old with a reasonably decent performance but which can still be improved with our product. This is one of the markets we are targeting right now.”

And elsewhere? “I do not foresee that we would be doing this in the North Sea or on the Atlantic coast however. We’re not going offshore yet. It would involve a totally different barge and the naval architects would have a big headache with that. But yes, we are thinking about it, but let us do it step-by-step.”