With further growth in container traffic forecasted, First Container Terminal has added eight new straddle carriers and three rail-mounted gantry cranes. On order for delivery in 2007-08 are three Konecranes ship-to-shore container cranes.

According to Liebherr-Werk Nenzing, mobile harbour cranes are becoming popular in Russia ports. Marketing manager Wolfgang Pfister says: “We feel that, slowly but steadily, the Russian market is turning towards the mobile harbour crane technology as the lifting capacity clearly exceeds the dominant rail-mounted slewing cranes which can be found in many ports in dozens. Furthermore a mobile harbour crane concept offers an outstanding flexibility in cargo handling which applies to many Russian ports that are not entirely ‘container-driven’ or ‘bulk-driven’, but enjoy the possibility to load/unload all kinds of goods with one single crane whereby achieving very attractive handling rates.”

He adds: “More and more terminal operators not only focus on the purchasing price of a harbour mobile crane, but concentrate on the comparison of lifetime costs towards the return on investment which puts a mobile harbour crane into a highly attractive position. Consequently we feel that the tendency towards the purchase of a harbour mobile crane is about to rise steadily in the coming years.”