Jorker Ship Management of Germany has placed an order with MacGregor Cranes for two of its GL deck cranes, each with an 80t lifting capacity at 14m outreach and 32t at 34m. Two cranes will be installed on each of two 10,380 dwt multi-purpose cargo ships under construction at Damen Shipyards in Galati, Romania. The combined lifting capacity of 160t gives the ships the flexibility of choosing cargoes outside the range of normal multi-purpose vessel operations.

MacGregor claims that its GL series, with capacities ranging from 25t to 90t, has established itself as ‘the leading container crane on vessels operating worldwide’.

The company has now also delivered the first of its new GLH series of cranes designed to cover a range from 100t up to 350t SWL.

‘Although the GLH heavylift cranes are a completely new design, they benefit from the same basic philosophy developed during long experience of our GL container cranes,’ said MacGregor Cranes marketing manager Hans Ohlsson. ‘This experience includes component selection, and how the whole system works together. The main difference is that a heavylift crane incorporates a higher degree of redundancy, such as a double-pump system and a further developed CC2000 crane control system.’

In May the first two 320t SWL cranes (6,500tm) were delivered to Shanghai Shipyard. They were ordered by the Polish/Chinese owner Chipolbrok for a family of four cargo vessels being built at the yard. The weight of each crane housing is 113t, with a height of 15m. The jibs are 38m long and weigh 63t. The cranes were transported on a 48-wheel trailer from Lüzhou to the Yangtze river, and then to Shanghai by barge.

MacGregor Cranes won this contract in January 2002. Each vessel is being equipped with two GLH heavylift and two standard GL cranes. The heavylift versions can work in tandem to handle cargoes over 600t. The GL cranes have an SWL of 50t each.

The GLH cranes were manufactured at MacGregor’s partner plant, Lüzhou Machine Works in Nanjing, China , and installed on board the first vessel last month.

Lüzhou Machine Works is owned by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and is MacGregor’s main manufacturing subcontractor for cranes.