Flender

While ship-to-shore crane manufacture has moved east over the last decade, many of the components incorporated into cranes shipped back west often incorporate European-built components.

Hoist gearbox manufacturers, for one, such as SEW Eurodrive and Siemens Mechanical Drives have come under fierce price competition from Far Eastern clones, but they have nevertheless proved extremely resilient.

Siemens Mechanical Drives claims to still have a ‘significant’ share of the global market for its products sold under the Flender brand name. Indeed, the company stresses it remains one of the world’s leading manufacturers of both gears and couplings for the ports sector. Nevertheless, a spokesperson remarks that all manufacturers in this sector had been significantly affected by price competition from Asian manufacturers.

“As you can imagine, even Mechanical Drives was faced by some downturn and we did inevitably lose some market share,” concedes Eike Schmidt, Siemens Mechanical Drives, sub-segment IDA, head of sales.

Nevertheless, the hoist gearboxes that it produces do vary somewhat to the cheaper alternatives available from other manufacturers. The housing, for example, is made from high-quality steel or ductile iron. Furthermore, Far Eastern hoist gearboxes tend to be somewhat larger, while Mechanical Drives has concentrated on producing a more compact design, which helps to save weight and space, something that is appreciated whenever cranes are designed to operate on quay-sides.

“Our crane gearboxes are also based on the modular design of the high-performance Flender gear units programme, which is proven for cranes and other industrial applications globally. The modularity and high levels of standardisation thereby ensuring short lead times and easy availability of parts,” the company tells Port Strategy.

It also stresses two other key factors: its gearboxes emit the lowest noise emission levels on the market and a new sealing system has enhanced product reliability.

Pressed as to why fitting a Flender gearbox to a quayside gantry crane would make more sense than choosing a cheaper alternative, the German manufacturer points out that, by sourcing the highest quality components, the product as a whole is a better bet than anything produced by rivals.

“I think you also have to appreciate that our manufacturing processes are extremely reliable, plus we offer top quality service, both of which mean operators have few problems with our products,” says the company.

When challenged as to the ability of European-based manufacturers to provide the type of quality back up service nowadays required by global operators, the company again stresses that all spare parts for its hoist gearboxes can be acquired extremely rapidly, irrespective of where any operator might be located because of the high levels of standardisation.

Rainer Liesner, head of quality and after sales at Mechanical Drives, adds: “We believe we offer unparalleled service, because we have an international network of production plants, service centres and sales points. In addition to our product design and manufacturing quality, this world wide accessibility might be the main reason why our customers are able to rely on our branches to provide them with a solution to any problem they might encounter.”

However, there have been some high profile cases in recent years whereby drive components have singularly failed to reach their theoretical lifetimes. Mr Liesner says that this has been the result of crane manufacturers having to increase both the capacity and velocity of their gantry cranes, resulting in higher dynamic loads placed on the drives, with hoist drives particularly affected.

Subsequent torsional vibration analysis studies have allowed experts to get a detailed understanding of the latest crane technologies and crane operations. Company experts are therefore able to suggest improvements to operators, such as fine-tuning of the control and brake systems.

“By doing this, you get a much gentler operation of drive components, such as the gearboxes and couplings, which leads to an increase of equipment reliability and operational availability,” says Mr Liesner.

Finally, quizzed as to how rapidly an operator should assess return on its investment in a hoist gearbox, the company spokesperson points out that operators need to look at factors such as high availability and high reliability across the entire working life of a gearbox in their calculation.