#Ports&Shipping - UK ports operator, Associated British Ports (ABP) celebrated a milestone as the Port of Hull’s two £10.5 million cranes built in Ireland, served their first container shipment.
The fully assembled 600 tonne cranes arrived on the Humber estuary last month from Cork Dockyard in Rusbrooke. The cranes constructed by Liebherr had been loaded on board heavy lift vessel HHL Lagos.
First to use the new 50m high ship-to-shore gantry cranes in Hull was Thea II, Afloat adds the containership's coincidental connection with Cork, from where last year BG Freight Lines launched a new service linking Liverpool.
The cranes are equipped to handle ships with more than 500 standard containers. The 360 TEU capacity Thea II had arrived last Friday from Amsterdam, to discharge and load 180 containers.
The newly-expanded terminal that can now handle double the capacity - some 400,000 containers per year - is going from strength-to-strength as it has recently secured three new weekly sailings from Amsterdam to Hull with Samskip.
“After taking around a year to construct and even longer to plan, seeing these colossal cranes up and running ahead of schedule is a highly-anticipated moment,” said ABP Humber Director Simon Bird.
“These huge pieces of kit will be part of Hull’s skyline for at least 20 years serving around 10,000 vessels in their lifetime. We have driven in major investments such as new equipment, increasing the footprint of the terminal and employing more operational staff to prepare for our next wave of growth in the container business.”
The Humber container ports - Immingham and Hull - has seen 28% growth compared to last year. ABP state they are committed to investing £50 million in its container terminals on the Humber - located in Immingham and Hull - in response to continued growth in demand.
