Initial GWS Crane Hire has bought five new crawlers from NCK Cranes – two of the new 90t Astra HC-90s and three 65t Nova HC-65s.
The Astras will be delivered first with one arriving this month and the other next month. The order for the three Novas was only finalised in February.
The fully hydraulic Astra is NCK’s latest crane. It was originally designed as an 80 tonner (NCK produces 80t crawler Oct99, p11) but once on the testbed it outperformed initial expectations. The first unit to be produced is being taken by Scotland-based Weldex, with GWS taking numbers two and three.
The Astra HC-90 can be fitted with 12m to 60m of main boom and with an 18m fly jib which can be offset at up to 30O.
Line speed is 108m/min and single line pull is 12,300kg for the lift crane version and 27,500kg as a duty-cycle machine.
GWS said that it chose the Astra for “ease of transportation”. The crawler unit is retractable to 3.5m wide, fully rigged.
Meanwhile an announcement is expected next month concerning the future ownership of GWS, put up for sale by its parent company Rentokil Initial last year.
