JEDDAH: Jeddah’s port skyline changed drastically on Monday with the arrival, 19 months after the beginning of the construction of the Red Sea Gate Terminal (RSGT), of four giant quayside cranes. The huge machines, the biggest type of ship-to-shore crane in the world, berthed at the new Red Sea Gate terminal quay at precisely 10 a.m. after arriving in Jeddah late on Sunday to wait for pilotage.
Mazen Matar, the project director of the RSGT who was on the quayside to see the arrival, looked at the massive machines and commented that high efficiency of the cranes and the huge load capabilities were necessary to deal with the new generation of container super-carriers and would have a tremendous economic impact on the Kingdom. “We have the tools; now we can finish the job,” he observed.
The journey from Shanghai was not without some challenges as the specially designed carrier had to wait out rough seas caused by typhoons for several days. The size and configuration of the cranes carried, already assembled, on deck required that the ship, the Zhen Hua 25, be sailed with great skill and with a constant eye on sea and weather conditions.
The first hint of the arrival was two and a half hours before docking when they were still 15 or so kilometers off shore. Their massive superstructures eased over the horizon, followed a full half hour later by the hull of the ship.
Each crane will require two days to unload from the ship. Each will be rolled on train-type steel wheels onto the quayside where it will be jacked up, the wheel bogeys turned through 90 degrees and the crane lowered onto the rails embedded in the quay.
“It is a very tricky operation,” Peter Reynolds, RSGT project manager commented. “These are massive pieces of equipment and it requires considerable skill to offload them.”
When all 10 of the new cranes have been delivered they will put RSGT in the front rank of the world’s container terminals. The cranes manufactured by ZPMC, China, are specially designed to serve next generation container-ships that can carry over 12,000 full size containers. They are capable of handling two 40-foot or four 20-foot containers in one lift. Their ability to lift 85 tons under their spreader beams and move the load over a distance of up to 24 rows and at 65m above the water level is unique in Jeddah. Only a handful of container terminals around the world have equipment with similar specifications.
An additional two ship-to-shore cranes of the same type will be delivered next month.
