UK contractor Edmund Nuttall has taken delivery of a new generation IHI DCH 900 crawler crane from IHI’s UK – and now European – distributor AGD Equipment Sales.
The 90t duty-cycle lattice boom crane is to be used on a wastewater scheme in Portsmouth on the south coast of England where it will be used for lifting spoil out of a tunnel.
The DCH 900 is a heavy duty upgrade of the CCH 800. Among the changes, the 900 has the drums one in front of the other instead of side by side, as they were on the 800. Boom length remains 58m.
This machine is the first of the model to arrive in Europe. To comply with European regulations it has had rotation resistant ropes added and IHI’s own safe load indicator has been replaced with Loadwise kit. The selling price was £425,000 ($700,000), said AGD sales director Robert Law.
AGD, which saw its IHI distribution agreement extended from the UK to all Europe at the start of the year, has also brought over 25 units of IHI’s new 2.93t telescopic mini-crawler, the CCH 30T. It has 360O slewing with zero tailswing within the width of the crawler. Its 10m boom reaches out to a maximum 9.5m horizontally and 10.9m above the ground. At 5m radius it can lift 370kg and pick and carry 190kg.
AGD believes that there is a market for this machine throughout Europe. “We have had an inquiry from Norway for an oil field yard,” said Law.
AGD claims to have introduced mini-cranes to the UK when it sold its first 5t IHI crane, the CCH 50T, to contractor J Murphy in 1990. Its own rental fleet of 75 crawlers includes 30 mini-crawlers: 15 of the CCH 50Ts and 15 of Kato’s 3t-capacity KC30 City Crane.
Law said that the Kato machine was essentially a 7t mini-excavator body with a telescopic truck loader crane attached, while IHI’s new 3t model has been designed as a crane from the outset.
