The USA – Bulk Handling from the States

On 16 February this year, a 3000 Series E-Crane was fully assembled in three days, after a very complex transportation and erection process.

E-Crane Worldwide/Indusign offers a complete package of services, including turnkey crane installations worldwide. Correct planning and transport engineering using the latest technology are essential to reducing the delivery time and costs.

When you build and install very big equipment worldwide, like E-Crane Worldwide/Indusign does, you get involved in some of the largest and most complicated erection projects.

The E-Crane project for the new coal unloader at the Crystal River power station (Tampa, Florida, USA) is a typical example of such a complicated transport and erection process, for which careful planning was essential.

The manufacturing, initial shop assembly and testing were carried out at E-Crane Worldwide/Indusign’s facilities in Adegem, Belgium.

When it came to transporting and erecting this new 3000 Series E-Crane weighing over 400 tonnes and towering to a height of more than 30 metres (100ft), the E-Crane engineers were challenged. The solution:

Phase one — in a first phase, during December 2006, structural components for the E-Crane weighing more then 60 tonnes were trucked from E-Crane Worldwide/Indusign’s assembly shop in Adegem, Belgium

to a quay in Flushing, The Netherlands. There, the components were further assembled into two major subassemblies, the lower and upper part of what would later become the new giant E-Crane.

Phase two — The second phase started mid-January 2007. The two subassemblies, each weighing around 175 tonnes, were loaded onto an ocean going transport vessel sailing for Port Manatee, Florida, USA.

Phase three – this was executed at port Manatee in the Tampa bay area (Florida, USA). The subassemblies were transloaded onto a barge and pushed by a tug approximately 190 kilometres north to the Crystal River coal dock facility.

Phase four — during the fourth and most critical final stage, these subassemblies were put onto the dock and mechanically joined with the assistance of a 600-tonne floating stiff leg derrick crane and a land-based 500-tonne telescopic boom crane.

A complex ‘tandem’ crane lift to place the upper portal on the lower portal was the critical lift. The 175-tonne assembly had to be level and positioned within a few millimetres for the bolts to drop in. After careful setup, this operation was completed in 40 minutes from lift-off to set down. For this E-Crane this final phase was the closing masterpiece of a remarkable and more than 5,500-mile journey between E-Crane Worldwide/Indusign in Adegem, Belgium and Crystal River in Tampa, the United States.