AAL has successfully delivered a cargo of four rubber-tired gantry cranes (RTGs) to the Port of Felixstowe as part of a development project that will see the United Kingdom’s busiest container port add an additional 18,000 TEUs of container storage capacity to meet growing demand. The ZPMC Chinese-made RTGs were loaded in Shanghai and shipped to Felixstowe aboard the 31,000 DWT mega-size mpv A-Class AAL Kobe, for the CPIA forwarding and shipping agency. Each of the units measured 32 m x 14 m x 30 m and weighed just under 200 tonnes. 

AAL has successfully delivered a cargo of four rubber-tired gantry cranes to the Port of Felixstowe.

The new remote controlled RTGs will serve Berths 8 and 9 at the port and are capable of stacking containers six-high to enable more efficient use of the new yard. All four units were discharged safely using the Kobe’s own heavy lift cranes (700 tonnes max lift) with support from AAL’s engineering department, which planned the entire operation and dispatched one of its most experienced cargo superintendents (CSIs) to oversee proceedings.

During the discharge operation, the Port of Felixstowe’s head of corporate affairs Paul Davey visited the AAL Kobe to hand-over a commemorative plaque to Captain Aleksandr Afanaskin in celebration of AAL’s inaugural call.

“We are delighted to be back in the UK and calling for the first time in Felixstowe with such an impressive project cargo,” said Christophe Grammare, AAL’s commercial director. “Although the UK is a significant container shipping market – Felixstowe being the sixth-busiest container port in Europe with about 26 million tons of cargo each year – it is not immediately associated with project heavy lift cargo. The RTGs were shipped there on-deck of the AAL Kobe which, with a highly flexible cargo capacity of almost 40,000 CBM, was also carrying additional project cargo under-deck that was discharged a few days later in Ireland.”