Sibre on the expansion path

Germany’s SIBRE continues to expand both its product range and its network of manufacturing, service and support facilities. In April this year, SIBRE opened a new facility in Kolkata, India. The location focuses on the assembly of drum brakes for the domestic market. These are mostly for smaller industrial cranes and conveyor drives. On the service side, the facility is equipped with state-of-the-art testing and repair equipment.

Michael Scheidt, Head of Sales at SIBRE, said the company considers it important to have an international service network to support its customers. SIBRE now operates 13 subsidiary companies around the globe, mostly located close to large container ports. These facilities are complemented by a network of around 15 service partners with trained staff to service brakes.

There are still a handful of locations where SIBRE is looking for local partners, but “I would say the network is already very well established”, Scheidt added.

New products

On the product side, SIBRE has a new design of rail clamp that is ready to launch. Detailed specifications will be available shortly, but the rail clamp is designed without guide rollers so there is no contact with the crane rail during crane long travel. It was specially developed for fast-travelling cranes, such as ASCs or intermodal RMGs.

For STS cranes, SIBRE continues to make progress with its Snag Load Protection (SLP) system. This system is designed to detect a snag incident, prior to any stress or overload occurring. It does not require a safety coupling on the hoist drum. SLP is now operating in Salalah, Oman, where it has been retrofitted to a crane.

“One of the STS cranes for Salalah is equipped with our SLP System, all the remaining cranes are ‘ready for SLP’, that means the hoist brakes are prepared for the system, so it will be easy to make an upgrade at site,” Scheidt said. “We are optimistic that another nine cranes will be upgraded soon, as the system is really increasing the performance of the cranes,” he added.

Elsewhere, SIBRE has supplied the same configuration for 10 new ZPMC STS cranes for NEOM Oxagon, the new “fully automated” port in northwest Saudi Arabia. Scheidt said this was one of SIBRE’s biggest orders last year, as it includes all the braking systems for 10 STS cranes and 30 RTGs.

Strong in retrofits

In the retrofit market, one of SIBRE’s biggest projects involved replacing over 100 storm brakes on the STS cranes at a major port in Germany.

SIBRE replaced equipment from another manufacturer with its RPS rail pusher. This is a spring-applied, hydraulically released, static brake that acts on the railhead in case of an emergency or power failure. Another large retrofit project was for the replacement of over 300 gantry brakes on RTG cranes at a large port in Malaysia. SIBRE replaced the existing brakes with its USB thruster disc brakes.

Meanwhile at a port in the Netherlands SIBRE replaced over 200 hoist brakes on container cranes with its USB brakes, which come in five different sizes. In other retrofit applications, SIBRE has replaced motor-integrated brakes on gantry drives with its CB8 compact disc brakes. The CB8 is a failsafe disc brake with various release options, including a compact electro-hydraulic thruster, solenoid, hydraulic and pneumatic cylinder.

“This brake was especially designed for the use in gantry drives and is virtually maintenance free, even in this harsh environment,” Scheit said. A calliper-style brake like the CB8 is typically more expensive than a motor-integrated brake “but due to the reduced maintenance cost the ROI can be achieved quickly,” Scheidt noted.

For retrofit applications, brakes are usually sold directly to ports, who have their own maintenance personnel carry out the installation, with supervision and support directly from SIBRE.

“Using one-off contractors is not really practicable for us, the brake systems are safety critical components, and we want only qualified staff to work with them. All our service people undergo intensive training before starting to work at customer sites,” Scheidt concluded.