PORT logistics company ISO Limited will soon bring three new large mobile harbour cranes to Eastland Port, in a move to improve safety and export flow.
The first two cranes are scheduled to arrive at Eastland Port on November 8, while the third will arrive on November 16.
Two are making the 12,000 nautical mile journey from Germany, where they have been manufactured, and the third will be shipped down from the Port of Tauranga.
“The Liebherr mobile harbour cranes provide several major benefits, the most important being safety,” said ISO chief operating officer Andrew Davies.
“These cranes enable us to remove personnel from high risk areas of the wharf.
“They will also improve productivity and capacity. By using these mobile cranes rather than ships’ cranes, a greater volume of logs can be loaded on to vessels within a 24-hour period,” he said.
“Logs will be loaded directly from the trailers with a large grapple and placed into the vessel’s hold.”
Eastland Port will be the second port in New Zealand to use this type of innovation, with four ISO cranes already operating at the Port of Tauranga.
Mr Davies said that since introducing the cranes in Tauranga, there had been significant improvements in safety and productivity. ISO expects to see similar results in Tairawhiti.
“Additionally, in the current times with labour availability issues, having these cranes will allow ISO to retrain the existing wharf staff into other machinery-based roles within the business.”
ISO has 11 crane operators, taken from the local pool of staff, in training to operate them.
“There have already been 1110 hours of training, mostly using a simulator based in Gisborne, and including 353 hours of in-crane training in Tauranga,” Mr Davies said.
“Two operators are consistently training in Tauranga on a four-day rotation.”
Eastland Port infrastructure manager Marty Bayley said with the largest infrastructure developments in a century happening at Eastland Port over the next few years — including stage one of the Twin Berth project beginning in a few months — ISO will be wellequipped to improve cargo flow throughout the entire forestry supply chain.
“The cranes will help keep exports moving as volumes grow in Tairawhiti,” Mr Bayley said.
“The mobile harbour cranes will provide a safer, more efficient and reliable method of loading logs.
“We’re looking forward to seeing this worldleading technology operating here in Tairawhiti, and providing an improved service for our customers.”
Each mobile Liebherr harbour crane weighs 465 tonnes. At 53 metres high, they can lift a maximum of 124 tonnes.