E-Crane: Big in Belgium

E-Crane customers remain loyal with several projects in Belgium

E-Crane Worldwide, the engineering and heavy equipment construction company, based in Adegem, Belgium, has a proven track-record with satisfied customers all over the world. Maintaining a presence in its home country remains a top priority, however. In recent years, many Belgian companies have discovered the advantages of working with E-Crane.

This has led to an important share for E-Crane in the Belgian market, including cranes in the port of Antwerp and Ghent. E-Crane Worldwide provides design services as well as complete machine production, installation, support and training with on-going service for the heavy equipment industry. The E-Crane series offers models with up to 49 tonnes duty cycle capacity as well as up to 150ft/50m of horizontal outreach and up to 100ft/30m reach below grade.

This is due to E-Crane’s innate design featuring a movable counterweight and fixed parallelogram linkage which allows for the crane to remain in near perfect balance throughout its entire operating range. Its modular design allows each E-Crane to be tailor-made to the client’s specific requirements. Supported by a world-wide dealer and service network, E-Crane Worldwide is able to offer its customers on-going assistance.

One Belgian company that has discovered the benefits of a balanced E-Crane is Antwerp-based Schelde-Natie, one of the biggest Belgian companies in the grains, derivatives, vegetable oils, and cocoa broad beans sector. In co-operation with Cargill, who is no stranger to E-crane with cranes operating at several Cargill plants worldwide, Schelde-Natie realised an offloading project in the port of Antwerp. A 1000 Series / 7317 B GA-E model was installed in late 2006 and is used to offload coleseeds into a bunker.

In the harbour of Ghent, Van Heyghen Recycling (part of the Group Galloo Recycling) has recently installed its second large E-Crane to offload Panamax-sized vessels. The machine is identical to the E-Crane installed there three years before. Both E-Cranes are 2000 Series / Model 21382 GA-E with a duty cycle capacity of 30 tonnes (in grab mode) and a lift capacity of 40 tonnes (in hook mode). These E-Cranes also have an outreach of 38.2m. They are used for loading scrap into handymax vessels, offloading barges and coasters, and stockpiling.

The Galloo Group is one of E-Crane’s best customers with several cranes operational at the different Galloo sites in Belgium and France. Van Heyghen Recycling is very happy with the success of the E-Cranes at their facility, which is why they have continued coming back to E-Crane for several reasons, including the long outreach and impressive stockpiling height, while taking up minimum dock space. The company is also greatly impressed with the reliability and longevity of the machines.

Installing E-Cranes in their scrap yard has led to a major decrease in operating time and costs of loading handymax vessels. Rik Debaere, CEO of Group Galloo Recycling, comments: “With the E-Crane we are now saving up to 50% in time compared to the old situation.” It is no surprise that the Galloo Group now operates more than ten E-Cranes in various scrap yards throughout Europe.

E-Crane Worldwide is not only present in the ports of Antwerp and Ghent, but also in other important Belgian terminals. Due to excellent customer relations, E-Crane frequently receives repeat orders. As was said before, both Cargill and the Galloo group have several E-cranes in operation.

The Multiserv scrap catering project at the Carinox steel mill in Charleroi, Belgium, has three E-Cranes in operation. Multiserv is a division of the Harsco Corporation, and is the world’s single largest provider of outsourced, on-site mill services to the global steel and nonferrous metals industries. Carinox is one of the four European production sites of Ugine & ALZ, the European subsidiary of Arcelor’s Stainless Steel Business Unit.

Thanks to the successful installation of the third E-Crane in Charleroi, the Carinox steel mill now has a design capacity of handling about one million tonnes of stainless steel per year. The E-Crane assists both in unloading inbound scrap and filling the scrap baskets for the mill.

Source: International Bulk Journal, Issue 3 2013