Wire Rod Handling
18 May, 2020
Compagnia Portuale Monfalcone provides complete services including loading and unloading, port operations in general, as well as, terminal operations. The company specialises in steel/metal products, pulp and timber products and general cargo. It also handles over-sized equipment (project cargo), yachts, rolling stock to name a few. CPM develops and manages cargo traffic through the Port of Monfalcone, the most important general cargo port in the Northern Adriatic.
In one of their latest projects, the company had to handle and transport a cargo of 2,500Tn of wire rod pieces to northern Africa for Gruppo Pittini.
Grupo Pittini wire rod is intended for drawing low carbon content wires, products for reinforced concrete, wire rods for welding wires, wire rods for metal frameworks. And medium and high carbon content wire rods for ropes, plaited bands and strands for prestressed reinforced concrete, wires for tyres and mechanical springs.
Wire Rod Handling
For this specific shipment, CPM used ten evo2 automatic crane hooks, set up on a spreader beam, in order to load each wire rod piece, with each piece weighing 2.5Tn. The evo2 automatic hooks have a lifting capacity of up to 2,5Tn (or over 5,500 lbs.).
The wire rod frames were manually engaged to the automatic lifting hooks with ease thanks to the spring loaded latch which impede the slings from accidentally unleashing from the hook.
Once the wire rods were safely on the ship’s hold, the load was released remotely thanks to the remote control, keeping workers at a safe distance during the unloading process. In all, only two operators were used to engage the load, minimising risks during the complete operation. No workers were needed inside the ship’s hold to disengage the load, as this action was handled remotely via remote control.
Added benefits include:
1) The evo automatic hooks are faster than traditional pneumatic hooks in port operations.
2) All elebia products are fail-safe designed, making it impossible to drop a suspended load.
3) The same evo2 automatic hooks, thanks to their compact design, can be used for different applications in ports (paper pulp, big bags, timber, palletized loads, etc.) with no need to modify their parameters.
4) Unloading operations are safer thanks to the automatic release feature.
Get a clearer view of the whole process in the below video!