New record cranes for PSA Antwerp

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 | Today, the ship "Zhen Hua 25" entered the port of Antwerp with two brand new cranes for the Noordzee Terminal. These two container cranes are the last ones in a series of six, in which PSA Antwerp has invested in the past two years.

The new container cranes have a lifting height of 52 meters and a 70 meter outreach. They are among the largest in the world and perfectly able to handle the latest mega container ships. In addition, they have the largest lifting capacity of all current container cranes in Belgium: they are "dual hoist" cranes, that can handle two 40-foot or four 20-foot containers simultaneously, with a total weight of 100 tons.

The cranes were built tailor-made in China. In order to guarantee the quality, the construction of the cranes, which lasted one year, was closely monitored at the Shanghai site by ATS staff. The cranes were also tested, technically, but also operationally by a crane driver who traveled to Shanghai especially for this purpose.

The cranes were transported fully erected, from China to Antwerp, to minimize on-site commissioning at the container terminal. As the vessel could not pass through the Suez Canal, due to its extremely high cargo, it sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the voyage lasted almost 10 weeks. The cranes will be 'unloaded' at the Noordzee Terminal and will be made ready for operations as quickly as possible.

The new cranes are part of an upgrading program at Noordzee Terminal, which started some time ago. The quay wall of the container terminal was recently deepened to 17m and extended to 1,225 m. With the delivery of the two new cranes, the total crane fleet at Noordzee Terminal comes to 14, 10 of which are ‘dual hoist’.

Thanks to these expansions, we are perfectly capable of handling multiple megavessels simultaneously at Noordzee Terminal and meet the demands of the large shipping alliances.