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As demand for heavy lifting grows, manufacturers advise that success is all in the planning. Keren Fallwell reports

As so much in the world is getting bigger so demand for heavy manufacturing is growing, and lifting capacities are increasing. Super-sized container ships and oil rigs to energy plants, factories and warehouses, all require heavy lifting equipment and the hoist sector is keeping pace.

“Our customers are moving bigger pieces in larger halls, so the capacity and span of cranes is growing,” says Kuli export manager Oliver Riese.

“Demand for heavier equipment is rising, possibly because the production of larger components is increasing.”

In the past 10 years Street Crane has experienced a 60% increase in orders for heavy lift cranes and hoists.

“The underlying picture is that in the developed world, which has a shrinking heavy industrial sector, orders have declined but for us this has been more than offset by developing countries where the heavy industry is still growing and where we have increased our presence,” says director Andrew Pimblett.

Ingersoll Rand has noticed the super sizing trend in several industries, not least the oil and gas sector. “Fifteen years ago the weight of most blowout preventer stacks (BOP) was 20-75t; today they’re 50-150 or 200t so the equipment to handle them has to have a higher capacity,” says Gus Caldera, global business development leader, Rand Material Handling.

Shipyards and ports are also specifying heavier lifting equipment as ships and propellers increase in size, and with that, fuel capacity. “Bigger ships have larger components and heavier loads so we’re building bigger and bigger hoists. In the past year I’ve seen 100 ton hoists ordered,” says Mark Koski, North American commercial leader at Ingersoll Rand.

No matter what the lifting capacity, the paramount concern is safety. “The first consideration is always safety and compliance with regulations,” says Pimblett. “In common with other manufacturers, Street Crane goes to great lengths to ensure our designs fully comply but that is only half the story: end users must be equally rigorous in their use of lifting equipment.”

Caldera agrees safety is the highest priority for customers installing heavy lifting equipment.

“Sometimes they will over-engineer what they require in terms of capacity to ensure nothing goes wrong,” he says.

In the US, lifting equipment above a 3t capacity typically requires an annual inspection. Smaller capacity hoists can be removed and sent to the manufacturer for inspection, says Koski, but larger capacity units are inspected and tested in situ.

“For heavier lifts,” says Caldera, “you need to have testing equipment on site to do a proper functioning test. Some customers use water bags to test 50t or 100t.”

Kuli says easy maintenance is always important, but particularly for heavy equipment. “All of our hoists, up to the strongest four-falls hoist with 63t capacity, are subject to the same, easy-to-maintain architecture,” says Riese. “Motor, gearbox and drum are arranged in one line so if there are any motor issues you just unscrew the motor block without removing any other parts. This helps even if you have to change wear parts, such as brake parts or a cooling fan.”

While smaller loads may be sustained with self-carrying loads, capacities over 5t are installed on integrated crane tracks so the decision of a single or double girder must be made.

“Double girder cranes can have better load distributions and better hook paths. Moreover, you are able to install walkways and platforms,” says Riese. “Single girder cranes are usually lower in price and normally have better horizontal hook approaches.”

Ideally, because of the sheer size and demands of heavy lifting, the cranes should be designed in tandem with the building, well before the first spade goes into the ground.

“It is important to consider well in advance the crane’s wheel loads and approach dimensions, without forgetting the working cycles. The overall height of the crane naturally plays a key role in defining the dimensions of the building and it has a direct impact on the cost of the building,” says Paresh Naik, product manager, winch cranes and components at Konecranes.

Street Crane agrees that the supporting structure is a key consideration when installing an overhead crane for heavy lifting. “Street supplies cranes and hoists with capacities up to 250t, mostly for installation in steel frame buildings. At higher capacities building structures must be purpose designed for the crane loadings. At lower capacities it is sometimes possible to retrofit a free-standing gantry to support the crane or hoist inside an existing building,” says Pimblett.

For Koski, the two key considerations are headroom and the beam, and solutions often require Engineering To Order (ETO). “With larger capacity lifts you have to consider the load-carrying parts. Number one is the beam. In an existing building the beam may not support the load so that changes the whole design criteria,” he says. “The headroom dimension is critical to clear whatever is below the lift. We can make a tighter envelope but it’s more expensive. I tell customers all the time: ‘the less headroom you have, the more costly it is’.”

Positioning the heavy lifting equipment also requires more planning. “To install larger units requires fork lifts, smaller air hoists and manual hoists, and once it’s in you have to do the annual load testing and inspections. For that you need certified weights so you have to have or rent those as well,” says Koski.

When thought hasn’t been given to how the building will accommodate the crane or to how large industrial units are moved within the building, the solutions can require cost and ingenuity. “For so many people the lifting equipment is an afterthought – they need to do maintenance, they have an existing building envelope and the standard product doesn’t work. We’re seeing a huge uptick in our ETO business where we’re modifying existing product lines to make it work,” says Koski.

“A couple of years ago a cement plant needed to remove the 25t motor on the crusher. They hadn’t considered the beam or maintenance so they had to cut out the side of the building, weld in a new beam, then put a hoist in just to remove the motor.”

Kuli recently had to use a special lifting device to install a crane in an existing building. “We couldn’t use a mobile crane with a hook coming from above so we used a lifting platform which could carry the crane from below and be ranked on the smallest areas. The crane had a 12.6t capacity and a 14.6m span and weighed around 7.5t,” says Riese.

GH Cranes also says the ideal is to design the building and cranes together but it has been involved in projects where the lifting is a late addition. “We are finding long-term rentals in logistics parks where no crane runway was considered initially. In those cases we install crane columns and runways independent from the building structure,” says Alexander Guerra, sales director standard cranes.

As the global economy evolves and environmental attitudes and policy change, so too does demand.

The metals industry has long been Street Crane’s biggest market for heavy lifting but the dynamics have shifted. In the main, orders for metal manufacturing now come from developing countries while metals and steel distribution continues to be an important source of orders in Europe, North America and other advanced economies.

“We are currently installing a series of heavy-duty 5 + 5t twin hoist single girder cranes for tandem lifting steel sections at Rainham Steel in the UK, and our partner Total Hoists and Cranes recently installed nine cranes, including 6.3 + 6.3t twin hoist cranes and a 10t goliath crane at Infrabuild’s new steel distribution facility in Western Australia,” says Pimblett.

The automotive industry is another traditional industry that constantly adapts to manufacturing cost and demand change so crane orders now come from anywhere, he says. “We recently supplied two wire rope hoists of 30/10t capacity to Suzuki in Hungary, through our partners Darusin, and Atlas Honda in Lahore have ordered two die handling cranes with a 30/20t capacity from our Pakistan distributor Otto Manufacturing.”

As demand for heavy lifting grows, manufacturers advise that success is all in the planning