North Sea Terminal Bremerhaven (NTB) has taken delivery of four new ship to shore (STS) container cranes that will allow it to handle future generations of ultra large container vessels (ULCVs)
Designed to work vessels with 25 containers across and up to 10 high on deck, the Liebherr STS cranes are amongst the largest STS cranes in the world with an outreach of 73 m, a span of 30.48 m and a backreach of 25 m. They each have a safe working load of 75 tonnes and are identical to the six other STS cranes supplied by Liebherr since 2018.
Christian Lankenau, managing director of NTB, commented: “We are pleased to add four new Liebherr ship to shore container cranes to our fleet. These new cranes and the previous six allow us to provide exceptional service to our customers. We have invested in these large state-of-the-art cranes, not only for the present, but also for the future and they are a key part of our growth and expansion plans.”
Liebherr Automation Systems facilitates semi-automatic moves, with manual intervention only required when operating below a predefined safe height. The port operates straddle carriers on the landside and the cranes are equipped with a yard monitoring system, which scans the operational area for obstacles, hazards or straddle carriers, and will allow placement of the container at the target position only when it is safe to do so.
Innovative straddle carrier lane covers open only over the active lane, providing protection for those on the ground. Stack and vessel anti-collision, in addition to a vessel drift compensation system, provides safety when operating. Crane to crane, and crane to ship, laser anti-collision systems provide further safety when the crane is travelling or boomingmdown.
NTB has an annual handling volume of more than 3m TEU.
