Crane pair for Rotterdam Short Sea Terminal

Rotterdam Short Sea Terminal B.V. in the Netherlands has purchased two ship-to-shore (STS) cranes from cargo handling specialist, Kalmar.

Kalmar is part of cargo-handling machinery manufacturer Cargotec. Delivery of the first two cranes is planned to be completed by the end of 2018, as the cranes are being shipped from Taicang, China.

Rotterdam Short Sea Terminal B.V. (RST) claims to be the largest short sea shipping hub in Europe. It has purchased two of Kalmar’s wide-span monobox STS cranes which are designed for RST’s short sea operation. Kalmar said the containers are loaded directly from the truck and stacked between the legs of the STS with minimal container moves. Kalmar said it has a local team in Rotterdam that will be responsible for crane erection and project oversight, as well as providing customer support.

"We have had Kalmar STS cranes in our terminal for many years and they are some of the quickest in the world, allowing us to optimise our overall operational efficiency and keep service times for vessels and trucks as short as possible,” said Cees van Pelt, manager technical department and projects at RST. “Based on the solid performance of the current Kalmar cranes and the expertise of the local Kalmar team, we are confident that these new cranes will meet our STS productivity targets and help us continue to provide reliable service to our customers."

Tero Kokko, senior vice president, automation and projects at Kalmar, commented, "Our joint history with RST dates all the way back to the 1990s. We are happy that we can support them in expanding their business. This will be the first STS delivery from our joint venture Rainbow-Cargotec Industries (RCI) in China. Since its opening in 2013, RCI has delivered close to 300 RTG cranes to our customers worldwide and all the deliveries have been on time and in budget, so our joint venture is in excellent shape."