The Focus30 crane, developed by Netherlands-headquartered international heavy lift and transportation specialist Mammoet, has successfully completed its first job at an oil refinery in the UK.

The Focus30 is designed to deliver a high lifting capacity from within a small footprint.  For its first job it performed a top-and-tail lifting operation in tandem with a mobile crane in order to install a vessel at the facility.

The Focus30 can be erected vertically in sections and does not require a laydown area during assembly of its boom. This enables it to be built away from active plant so that less infrastructure is disrupted or closed during its use. This was one reason the crane was selected for scheduled turnaround activity at the refinery, said Mammoet.

First, the Focus30 was transported from a local port to the site using 36 axle lines of SPMT. It was then positioned in a staging area where a bespoke ‘book end’ transport frame was used, plus the hydraulic stroke of the transporters, to help manoeuvre the crane’s sections around on-site infrastructure – which included a number of low pipe racks. Once it reached its installation location, the Focus30 and 500-tonne mobile crane were used in tandem to lift the vessel and set it on its foundations.