Dutch tailoring

Most of the world's cranes, from 100kg minicranes all the way up to 1,000t crawlers and giant mobiles, are built in a serial process: customers may have many options when they buy a new crane, and the first buyers of a new model may play a vital collaborative role in developing the crane, but most crane builders expect to sell many models of the same design.

In the marine and offshore sector, and with some of the world's biggest land cranes, the scale and specialisation of the equipment built justifies a different approach. Here, manufacturers don't bet on being able to sell a series of the same model, but build each crane to tailor made specifications.

One of the biggest players in this sector is the Dutch firm Huisman, which designs and builds cranes and other equipment in the Netherlands, Czech Republic and in China. Most familiar among the company's products, at least to readers of this magazine, will be the four giant PTC ringer cranes it has built for Mammoet. The company hasn't always worked on such big pieces of kit though, as crane sales manager Gerben Roks explains, "Huisman was founded in 1929, by the Huisman family, so this year marks its 80th anniversary. It started off making hoisting equipment, like derricks for cargo ships."

In the 1970s, Huisman's current CEO Joop Roodenburg was completing his education as an engineer at the RotterdamTechnical College and Delft University, before starting his career with Big Lift (later renamed as Mammoet), initially as operationsmanager at a refinery in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

In 1980, Roodenburg and a friend from Big Lift, Richard Krabbendam, started their own consulting firm, International Transport Rigging and Engineering Consultancy (ITREC).

At the same time, Roodenburg's father, Les Roodenburg, had been building his ownership of Huisman, acquiring outright control of the company by 1981. ITREC worked with Huisman for the first time that year, designing and building the Taklift 4 for Smit. ITREC also designed the first heavy lift mast crane, two of which were installed on Mammoet's Happy Buccaneer (1984). The two companies merged in 1987, allowing the merged business to both design and build cranes in-house. Joop Roodenburg now runs the merged company.

Other innovative designs included active and passive heave compensations systems, the 3,300t Rambiz heavy lift barge, a 3,000t Offshore Mast Crane onboard the Sapura 3,000, and now a 5,000t Offshore Mast Crane.

Roks says, "Heavy lift cranes are the core of Huisman's business, but we also design and build state-of-the-art pipelay systems and drilling equipment. Pipelay is a well established part of the business; and although drilling is still relatively new, we managed to obtain important orders for our innovative drill ship and drilling equipment sets. Huisman focuses on the offshore crane business, which accounts for about 90% of the crane projects. We provide a couple of onshore products, the PTC heavy ringer cranes, for Mammoet, containerized drilling units, skidding systems, etc.

"Most of the equipment we provide is aimed at the oil and gas sector, but new markets, as for instance the market for renewables, are developing.

"Our focus is on building customized equipment. The range of customisation can be very broad. Pipelay is always very customised, but for cranes we do have standard designs like our 300t pedestal crane and 800t mast crane that we add customised features to.

"We have three production facilities: our headquarters in Schiedam, a facility in the Czech Republic, and a plant in Zhangzhou, China. The Czech facility supports our Schiedam headquarters, and can build its own cranes up to 100t. Most of our cranes are now built in Zhangzhou.

"Zhangzhou is a port, opposite to Taiwan. The main reason to shift to production in Asia is that vessels are built in Asia. It's good for us to be close to the shipyards. The equipment we build is very big, and expensive to transport. We're in between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and close to Singapore. There is also a cost benefit, since labour costs are lower. On the other side, it requires a lot of effort (and cost) to deliver the same quality products as we provide for Europe.

"We'd built some land cranes before the PTC, all heavy ringers. We got into the land crane business because it is all equipment for heavy lift. It made sense to focus on this other type of custom built heavy lift crane. We delivered the last of the four PTCs we've built for Mammoet so far in 2007.

"The current market is a bit slower. It's hard to to get a 'go' or 'no go' decision from customers. There's a lot of people waiting on a decision by others in the supply chain. The wind turbine installation companies are waiting on the energy suppliers; the energy suppliers are waiting on banks and governments. A couple of years ago, people were buying and building cranes on speculation: no one is doing that now. It's down to the behaviour of the banks. They won’t lend unless you have a contract for the equipment. A lot of work should be available in the future, but it is hard to get a decision now."

Huisman is paying close attention to the wind turbine sector. It recently announced the initial concept for a new type of marine crane targeted directly at wind turbine installation, which will be unveiled in more detail at the European OffshoreWind 2009 Conference in Stockholm this month. The company says the new designs for the customized crane range include pedestal and ringer cranes for mainly jack-up vessels. In addition to the low construction weight, small footprint and minor tail swing of the existing Huisman cranes, additional value-adding features are the extensive lifting height, the small operational minimum radius and the possibility to install the crane around the leg of the jack-up. The cranes can be outfitted with additional features to ensure a safe installation procedure at high elevations.

Roks says, “There is a lot of potential in wind installation. Oil and gas will be quite steady although deepwater is the challenge, it will remain important, but, on the crane side, the wind turbine industry is a very promising market. There isn’t much equipment available to do wind jobs, and most of it wasn't built for wind jobs: like the Rambiz, which was originally built for the Vasco da Gama bridge project, it was built for another type of job and is now being used for wind. There are such big numbers of wind turbines that will need to be installed that there will need to be a lot more equipment, and much more efficient equipment.

“The wind turbine installation sector is dominated by jackup barges. They need cranes with a low construction weight. You need to find a way to work around the jackup legs, so you need a small footprint and low tailswing radius. You need to be able to work at a very low minimum radius, at very high lifting heights: as much as 125m above the water line.

“We designed a crane to be built around the jack up leg, but with no physical link between the crane and the leg. The biggest disadvantage of jackup barges is that the legs get in the way. By installing around one of the legs, you miss one obstacle and give the biggest possible area between the other legs and the centre of the barge.

“The new wind turbine cranes will range from 500t to 1,600t capacity. The size of crane needed depends on the foundations. On deep installations, around 50m, the foundations weigh up to 800t. With dynamic loading, the crane needs a capacity of up to 1,200t. In shallower water, installers use different types of piling. These weigh up to 500t, so, with dynamic loading, you need cranes with 800t capacity. Most customers want to do both foundations (in the winter) and wind towers (in the summer).”

Although the market has slowed down, Huisman manages to stay on a steady course. “That is the result of our focus for many years on delivering innovative and high quality products, from concept to delivery and in close cooperation with their clients. In addition, we constantly search for new market opportunities and develop new or improved products that add value to those markets. Again, our approach proves to be a successful one”.