Gottwald Port Technology, a subsidiary of Demag Cranes, has been awarded a contract to supply two more floating cranes to St James Stevedoring Partners of Louisiana, USA.
St James already operates six Gottwald floating cranes from mid-stream buoys on the Lower Mississippi River. Instead of the conventional rubber-tyred chassis that mobile harbour cranes are usually installed on, the floating cranes are mounted on barges. The two Model 8 variant HPK8400B cranes will be added to the existing fleet by the end of 2011 and are intended to make the transhipment of bulk goods including ores, coal, cereals and fertilisers from larger vessels, up to baby-Capesize, to barges even more efficient.
The two HPK8400B cranes built for St James are the first Gottwald Floating Cranes that can handle loads weighing up to 100 tonnes. For handling bulk goods, they have the highest-performance 63-tonne grab curve that Demag Cranes has installed on a floating crane to date. Depending on operating conditions, the cranes can each handle up to 1,850 tonnes of bulk material per hour.
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