Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT) in Melbourne has acquired two automated ship-to-shore cranes made by Chinese port equipment manufacturer Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries.
The cranes will allow the terminal to receive some of the biggest trade vessels coming into the country, VICT said in a statement earlier this week. VICT, a fully-automated container terminal serving large trade vessels and operational since 2017, is a subsidiary of Manila-based International Container Terminal Services (ICTSI), which operates 32 container terminals in 19 countries.
“We are now ready to receive the largest vessels that will come to Australia as part of the upsizing strategy undertaken by all the major shipping lines in the world,” Bruno Porchietto, VICT’s CEO, said in the statement. “This trend will lead to an increasing number of supersized vessels sailing into Phillips Bay and mooring at VICT – the only terminal in Melbourne capable of receiving them.”
The dominance in port-related businesses by China, where some of the world’s busiest container ports are located, continues to help Shanghai Zhenhua with sales, despite political tensions with Australia and the Philippines.The new automated cranes made by Shanghai Zhenhua are the largest in Australia, with a lift height of 49 metres, or 10 metres higher than the terminal’s five existing such cranes, VICT said. The boom’s 60-metre outreach enables the new cranes to operate 22 containers across on a vessel, compared with the existing cranes, which are capable of handling 19 containers across with their 50-metre boom outreach.
The new cranes also offer better productivity with their lashing platforms mounted 15 metres high, compared to cranes that only allow pinning to be completed at the quay level.
VICT’s acquisition of the new cranes is part of its A$235 million (US$150.2 million) expansion project that will increase the terminal’s capacity to 1.25 million twenty-foot equivalent units.
The terminal announced in August that it had also acquired six additional automated stacking cranes as part of its expansion. The process will be completed by the end of the year.
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