GEORGIA PORTS AUTHORITY OF USA ORDERS MORE STS CRANES FROM KONECRANES
The Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) has ordered four more Ship-to-Shore (STS) cranes from Konecranes for the Port of Savannah, Georgia. The order was received in December 2015 and delivery will be in the first half of 2018.
The Konecranes STS cranes currently on order have a lifting capacity of 66 tons, an outreach of 61 meters, and a lifting height of 46 meters above the dock. "Even before the new cranes arrive, Savannah has more cranes on its nearly two-mile long dock than any other single terminal in North America," said GPA Executive Director Curtis Foltz.
In 2015 the Port of Savannah moved an all-time high 3.73 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent container units), an increase of 391,356 TEUs, or 11.7 percent, compared to 2014.
"The expansion was fuelled in part by heightened demand in the US Southeast, Savannah's logistical advantages drawing new customers to Georgia, and cargo diverted from the West Coast," said Mr. Foltz.
The Port of Savannah currently operates 116 Konecranes RTG cranes with additional 30 RTGs in the delivery pipeline. It also currently operates 22 Konecranes STS cranes with 4 in the delivery pipeline for 2016, and 4 more in 2018 for a total of 30.
The STS crane engineering is carried out in Finland, and the key components are from Europe. The heavy structures are manufactured in China.
The crane purchases, along with the ongoing Savannah Harbor deepening, anticipate the opening this year of an expanded Panama Canal. This will provide an important new route for larger vessels calling on the US East Coast, which will shift from an average current capacity of 4,500 TEUs to more than 10,000 TEUs.
"Our relationship with the GPA goes back to 1990, when we delivered our first STS crane to Savannah," said Tuomas Saastamoinen, Sales & Marketing Director, Konecranes, Port Cranes. “With each container crane delivery over the years, we have made improvements, fine-tuning our technology in cooperation with the GPA, to constantly improve efficiency and reliability. The STS cranes on order now are the latest products of this process,” concluded Mr. Saastamoinen.
For more information:
Press
Tuomas Saastamoinen, Sales & Marketing Director, Konecranes, Port Cranes
E-mail: tuomas.saastamoinen@konecranes.com or phone +358 40 5168562
Investors and analysts:
Miikka Kinnunen, Director, Investor Relations, Konecranes
E-mail: miikka.kinnunen@konecranes.com or phone +358 20 427 2050
This press release and a downloadable photo are available on our website www.konecranes.com.
Konecranes is a world-leading group of Lifting Businesses™, serving a broad range of customers, including manufacturing and process industries, shipyards, ports and terminals. Konecranes provides productivity-enhancing lifting solutions as well as services for lifting equipment and machine tools of all makes. In 2014, Group sales totaled EUR 2,011 million. The Group has 12,000 employees at 600 locations in 48 countries. Konecranes is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki (symbol: KCR1V).
