Jul 28 | 2021
Project Utilizes Asia – Europe Trade Route Service
AAL Shipping recently delivered four of the largest rubber-tired gantry cranes the multipurpose carrier has ever handled to the Port of Oslo, Norway.
The cranes were engineering and manufactured by Kalmar, part of Cargotec and Rainbow-Cargotec Industries Co. Ltd., in Taicang, and will help handle increased container volume from Asia and Europe to Norway’s busiest port, which handled 1.5 million tonnes of containers in 2019.
The cranes will be deployed at the Port of Oslo’s main logistics hub, which handles about 80 percent of the country’s imported containerized goods.
The new-generation mobile units measured 36 meters high and 28 meters long and had a combined weight of nearly 700 tonnes. They were transported from Taicang in China to Oslo in a single sailing above the 31,000-deadweight-tonne multipurpose vessel AAL Puson, along AAL Shipping’s monthly Asia – Europe Trade Route.
Three of the cranes were fully erected and the fourth was loaded in parts, using the AAL Pusan’s port-side heavy-lift cranes, which has a max lift of 700 tonnes.
“Demand for regular and dependable services between Asia and Europe has grown exponentially in 2021, as markets rush to address shortfalls in scheduled development projects and shortages in general stock and commodity levels, depleted due to the pandemic lock-down of the past 18 months,” said Eike Muentz, general manager Europe, AAL Shipping. “In this sense, we are not just moving project heavy lift cargo like these cranes, but smaller breakbulk parcels, general cargoes, dry bulk commodities, steel, and containers.”
