Easing the maintenance of cranes at the port of Le Havre, France

The port of Le Havre is one of the largest ports in France, handling an annual container volume of more than 2 million TEU while operating under the ‘Grand Port Maritime du Havre’ port authority. The Generale de Manutention Portuaire (GMP), also known as the General of Port Handling, started their operations in Europe in 1976 at the terminal in order to handle an increased volume of containers and vessels. Scanclimber assisted in accessing the port’s cranes for maintenance work by providing a SC300K Hoist.

History

In the early 16th Century, the Port of Le Havre was just little more than a fishing village. A harbor, called the Havre-de-Grace at the time, was being constructed there in 1517. While time passed through the 16th and 17th centuries, the harbor expanded and developed to an extent that it could handle twice the traffic. The traffic kept on increasing by the start of the 19th century due to its expansion to the east. The port of Le Havre played an important role during various wars and battles throughout the years until World War II, when it was nearly destroyed. The port was re-built after the war and it has been expanding since and has been playing a significant role in the country’s trade and economy.

Challenges

One challenge at the port of La Havre was to access the harbor cranes while finding an efficient solution in respect to its installation, maintenance, quick availability of spare parts and to the suitability to the structure of the site. Some major challenges at the site were:

• Finding measurements for the basic construction of the cranes
• Replacing the existing hoist
• Installing a hoist without causing any major structural changes to the site’s basic construction

The purpose of this project was to replace an old hoist with a new one. A major challenge was to have the measurements of the landing and clearance dimensions on the site. This was challenging since the site was old and there were no layout drawings or other dimensional information available. Re-measurements had to be made, which was another test as they had to be carried out while the crane was in operation and the area where the old hoist was installed was contaminated with hydraulic oil. Additionally, it was emphasized to install the Scanclimber hoist without incorporating any major modifications to the crane itself. Scanclimber technicians from Poland addressed these challenges very skillfully. The measuring results enabled Scanclimber to design a customized hoist. The landing and cover panel were adapted in a way that nearly no additional changes on the existing basic construction had to be made. They replaced the old hoist with a new basic industrial hoist which started operating in June 2009.