Ship Photo of The Week – Parking the World’s Largest Container Cranes

The first four container handling gantry cranes for the EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven, Germany’s only deep-water container port, arrived Tuesday morning aboard the ZMPC’s Zhenhua 23 after a two month journey from Shanghai.

The massive Super-Post Panamax container cranes are capable of handling vessels up to 25 container rows wide, meaning the cranes, and port, will be able to accommodate the world’s largest containerships — Maersk’s “Triple E” class containerships will measure just 23 container rows wides.

Each crane weighs in at 1,750 tons with a usable jib length of 69 meters and a load bearing capacity of 120 tons.

Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven has ordered a total of 16 of these massive gantry cranes that will eventually line the Wilhelmshaven quay wall.  The first phase of development, which is expected to go into operation by August of this year, included the order of eight of these cranes that will span a 1,000m section.  A second container vessel carrying four more cranes for the first phase of development is expected to depart from Shanghai soon.

“We view these container cranes as an investment in the future,” said Marcel Egger, managing director of EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven GmbH & Co. KG and member of the EUROGATE Group management. “Currently the world’s biggest container vessel with a load capacity of 15,550 TEUs has 22 container rows on deck, while all other mega carriers, including the 18,000-TEU ship on order have 23 container rows on deck.”

The container gantries will be moved ashore one by one during the coming weeks and made ready for trial operation.

Subscribe for Daily Maritime Insights

Sign up for gCaptain’s newsletter and never miss an update

— trusted by our 107,238 members