German heavy transport group Riedl and Italian partner International Cargoways loaded out a complete power station from the yard of the Italian manufacturers – Linde – to the UK. The job included moving three 250t furnaces that measured 24m high, 8m wide and 17m long.
Apart from being extremely tippy – the furnace units’ centre of gravity was 16.5m above the ground – the four support legs were only 5.2m apart, which is too narrow for most trailers.
To deal with this special job, Belgian heavy transport firm Trans ADM provided 12 axles of hydrostatic self-propelled Goldhofer PST/ST transporters. These modules can be split lengthwise and recombined in a special narrow configuration measuring only 4.9m wide.
The transporters rolled 1,850m to the harbour. Despite continuous rainfall, the transporters did not slip on the wet road. Once set down, the furnace components were bolted together. The entire job – transporting a total a load of 1,307t – took only 72 hours.
Topsides move
Irving Equipment loaded a total of four modules weighing up to 400t on to barges in Nova Scotia, Canada.
The load-outs took place in July in a small disused shipyard in Pictou, Nova Scotia. The company used six axles of self-propelled trailer on each side, plus another eight axles of Scheurele trailer pulled by a 525 HP Kenworth tractor. The team had to manually coordinate the steering of the self-propelled units with the Kenworth as they rounded a 180 degree turn on the route from the fabricating yard to the dock.
The modules were intended not for an offshore platform, but the floating production, storage and offloading vessel the Sea Rose, which will tap the White Rose oil field off the North Atlantic coast of St. Johns, Canada. The project cost is estimated at Canadian $2.3bn.
The vessel’s 260m-long hull was built in Busan, South Korea and arrived in Canada in April, where topsides fabrication and assembly was under way in Marystown, Newfoundland under the supervision of lead contractor Aker Maritime Kiewit Contractors. A Lampson Transilift 1800, among other cranes, lifted topsides sections into place.
