Eveline de Klerk

Walvis Bay-Namport has acquired four state-of-the-art, ship-to-shore cranes as it continues effort to enhance port efficiency and to meet the demands of container handling once the new container terminal starts operating.
The pricey container terminal is currently 76 percent complete.The N$440 million cranes will ensure faster off-loading of containers from ships and quicker turnaround for ships and this will minimise port congestion.
The new additions bring Namport’s cranes to nine.

The four cranes, of which one weighs 1.290 metric tonnes, were manufactured in Shanghai, China. They left that port on December 30 and were received on Friday morning at the port of Walvis Bay.

Whilst a mobile harbour crane can handle 15 containers per hour on average, the new cranes can load and unload 30 to 40 containers in that same time. They can reach a height of up to 70 metres and at peak load, one crane draws 2.5 megawatts of electricity. The entire port currently draws only 3.5 megawatts.

Speaking at the arrival of the cranes on Friday, the CEO of Namport, Bisey Uirab said the port infrastructure has evolved significantly and as a result increasingly larger container ships are docking at the port.
Hence, he says, it was important that Namport meets the demand of such container handling by acquiring equipment that is more powerful and faster.

“Therefore, ship-to-shore cranes were identified as one of the major components of the New Container Terminal project under the expansion project that is currently being constructed by the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC),” he said.   

The cranes are currently being offloaded, after which they will be tested and thereafter commissioned.
According to Uirab crane operators will be trained accordingly, so that the cranes can be operational by the end of this year.