When Favco took the order for the World Trade Centre cranes from contractor the Koch Company, it planned the STD2700s to be double the size of the biggest crane it had ever built – the STD750. With the STD2700’s 45t maximum capacity and 45.7m outreach – where it could still lift 14.6t – Koch was able to raise the towers with eight cranes, instead of 12 slow working derricks.
The success of the cranes excited Eric Favelle and persuaded him to set up a local manufacturing facility to better serve the market.
Favco International Corporation (FIC) was established in 1971. Following legal wrangles, Eric Favelle bought the company a year later. Business did not take off, and it was sold in 1974 to FMC Corporation (Link-Belt). The following year, Favco completed the design of the 1,081tm capacity STD 2300. It made and sold a range of huge luffers, but following the US recession of the early 1980s, FMC closed its luffing-jib tower crane factory in 1983. A decade later, after further ownership changes, including a licencing agreement with New Jersey-based crane distributor Cornell, Favelle Favco Cranes Pty Ltd introduced its largest model to date of a new generation of diesel-hydraulic luffing boom tower cranes – the 1,083tm capacity M 760D.
However, financial problems again caught up with the firm and the following year it went into receivership. In 1995 it was acquired by Muhibbah Engineering of Malaysia, who two years later acquired Kroll Cranes A/S of Denmark, the maker of the Kroll Giant tower cranes.
The change to Muhibbah ownership revived Favelle Favco’s fortunes and in 1999 it built its largest crane to date – the M 1250D, with a capacity of 100t at 22m radius. In 2000 it shipped two units to Taiwan to build the Taiwan Financial Centre. These 470kW (630 HP) cranes were equipped with winches offering 50t maximum line pull at 29.4 mpm line speed (110,000lbs at 96 fpm) to hasten the construction of what, at 507m (1,663ft), would become the world’s tallest building. Several workers on the site died in the Taiwan earthquake of March 2002. Although the quake destroyed two smaller Favco tower cranes, the M1250Ds, rigged at about half their final height, were not damaged.
In another congested city on the other side of the world, authorities in New York City were becoming increasingly intolerant of the traffic obstructions caused by the use of crawler-mounted lattice boom tower cranes. In 2000, Jimmy Lomma took the initiative to order three Favco M 760Ds for his New York Crane & Equipment Co., based in Brooklyn, NY. Lomma subsequently increased his order to eight units and the first of these
M 760D Series II cranes was delivered in 2002. Powered by 400kW (535hp) Caterpillar diesels, the cranes featured maximum lifting capacities of 95t (105 US tons) and maximum boom lengths of 68m (225 ft). At 61m (200ft) radius the cranes were rated at 8.6t (9.5 US tons). Their 12t (13 US tons)-capacity whip lines offered speeds of up to 197 mpm (646 fpm).
The M 1250D was subsequently uprated to 100t at 25m (110 US tons at 82ft) radius and renamed the M 1280D. It has been joined by an even larger crane, the 3,000tm M1680D, with a maximum rated capacity of 200t at 15m (220 US tons at 49ft).
The health of the company’s tower and offshore crane businesses was underlined in 2005 with the opening of a new 68,000 sq m plant near Seremban, Malaysia.
