Heavy Equipment Industry News Updates

Bilfinger Berger Australia has been renamed Valemus for an IPO launched this week, which it is hoped will raise up to AUS$ 1.3 billion (US$ 1.1 billion) when the offer concludes this July.

The IPO, and Bilfinger berger's aim to sell its entire shareholding in Valemus, is expected to net the German company approximately AUS$ 780 million (US$ 657 million) in cash as it looks to reduce its exposure to the cyclical construction sector.

The IPO will be the biggest in Australia so far this year and will place Valemus as the country's second largest construction and engineering group behind Leighton Holdings, which is majority owned by German contractor Hochtief.

Valemus chief executive Peter Brecht said, "European and Japanese groups had dominated Australia's construction sector and the launch of an independently listed entity was an important development for the sector."

A Grove GMK5165-2, donated by Burger Gruas, has been used to rescue a statue from the top of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santiago, Chile, after the building was damaged in an earthquake.

Raul Burger, owner of Burger Gruas, explained the significance of the job: "Chileans will feel the aftermath of the earthquake for quite some time. Repairing this great national monument is just one sign of recovery, and our company is honoured to play a role.”

Burger Gruas's crane worked on the lift alongside a fire truck, used to lift a rigger up onto the roof of the cathedral, ready to secure the statue for lifting

While the statue weighed only 3–4t, the importance of the job meant that Burger felt it important to be extra cautious in his choice of crane. The 165USt GMK5165-2 (branded as the GMK5130-2 outside the US) can lift up to 10t at the distances needed for this job. The crane was configured with 54m of boom, and reached out to a distance of 28m.

While Burger's cautious choice of crane added an extra level of safety to such a significant lift, it posed its own problems: the crane was positioned over a subway tunnel, in an already earthquake damaged city, and substantial amounts of cribbing were needed to spread the crane's weight.

The gantry crane, worth $9.5m, not including assembly, foundations or lifting equipment, can lift a maximum of 5,100USt, is wheel-mounted and travels on steel rails. It is used to lift and carry various lifting frames as well as positioning them for installation on the precast shells. It has the capability to move the lifting frames perpendicular to the crane rails.

“The Olmsted Dam gantry crane is the largest gantry crane of its kind in the world,” according to the US Army Corps of Engineers, Olmsted Resident Office, which is overseeing the project.

The crane, designed and supplied by Ederer LLC, a division of PAR Systems, Seattle, is self-contained, operating off a crane-mounted 300kW Caterpillar diesel generator. The top of the gantry supports stands for 12 strand jacks, the primary lifting mechanism to raise and lower the concrete shells.

Powered by 12 7hp electric motors, the crane is designed such that the two upper most beams, known as strand jack beams, can be hydraulically adjusted to conform to various lifting frame configurations.

Unloaded, the gantry will travel at 20ft/min; loaded, it will travel at 10ft/min.

A total of 64 36in diameter steel wheels are utilised for the movement of the crane. There are four rails, two each side, with a total runway length of 1,200ft.

Other structural components of the gantry crane include eight travel truck assemblies, eight vertical legs and 12 box beams. Approximately 5,000 bolts and welding holds these components together.

Overall dimensions of the crane are 100ft-long from travel truck number one to travel truck number four, 160ft-wide from outside of leg to outside of leg, and 140ft-high from ground level to the top of the strand jacks. This gives interior dimensions of 100 x 130ft.

Pre-erection on the ground of the girders, beams and leg assemblies took approximately one year, while lifting and erection of the main structural members took two months to complete.

Two Manitowoc 4600 crawler cranes were used to lift and place the components. The heaviest lift in this process was a girder, weighing 428,268lbs which put each of the crawler cranes at 95% of their maximum capacity, says the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The UK government will auction off the Channel Tunnel Rail Link as part of a huge sale of key assets to bring some much needed money into the country’s depleted coffers. The government expects to make some GBP 2bn (USD 2.9bn) from the sale.

The new coalition government will get a huge boost from the Privatization of High Speed 1, the railway used by Eurostar on its route between London and the Channel Tunnel, in its attempt to reduce the country’s GBP 167bn (USD 242.7bn) annual debt.

According to the Independent, the Department for Transport (DfT) and state-owned rail operator London & Continental Railways (LCR) are expected to distribute a sales document to potential bidders ahead of the emergency budget on 22 June.

Citi and UBS have been instructed as financial advisors and are acting for the DfT and LCR respectively.

Konecranes will close its assembly plant in Windsor, Wisconsin, USA by the end of October 2010.

Konecranes expects to book largely lease-related restructuring costs of €3m due to the factory closure in the second quarter of 2010.

Low equipment demand in developed markets, closer integration of Morris Material Handing Inc's (P&H) activities into Konecranes’ operations and widening usage of corporate-wide products, have reduced production volumes at the Windsor plant this year.

A plan has been prepared to cease operations at the Windsor factory and to relocate the remaining activities to the other Konecranes locations in the US.

The personnel in Windsor is 47 of which 27 will be offered jobs in other locations, leading to a reduction of 20 positions.

The US Navy has conducted tests on an innovative used container crane handling system that will allow fully laden containers to be passed between ships without access to a deep harbour, even in rough seas. The system has attracted attention from civilian users, in sectors such as offshore oil and gas.

The Large Vessel Interface Lift On/Lift Off (LVI Li/Lo) system has been under development by the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) and contractor Oceaneering Advanced Technology for the past five years. The project was developed as part of the US Navy's Sea base Concept, which envisages the capacity to establish 'Sea Bases' or offshore floating ports that would allow the Navy to ensure logistics flow between ships without securing a deep harbour.

A demonstrator version of the system was installed on the SS Flickertail State in 2009. This month, the Flickertail State performed tests of the system in the Gulf of Mexico, safely transferring 128 containers from one ship to another, with waves up to 1m in height. The crane's operators were able to lift and place unobstructed containers, to lift containers obstructed on multiple sides, and to place containers into obstructed holes in a container pile.

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