Rising container throughput and bigger container ships prompted the Finnish port to scour the market for little-used cranes
The crane has been acquired from ICTSI’s Gdynia concession, Baltic Container Terminal, for an undisclosed sum. It was shipper full-erect.
We have had loyal container transport customers since 2009 from, among other things, the KIP area, industry in central Finland and the retail trade,” said the port’s managing director Torbjörn Witting. “There is now a sharp increase in container traffic in the port of Kokkola and we have received strong feedback and several requests from customers to increase our container handling capacity.
“At the same time, the size of container ships is increasing all the time, for which the 17 container rows crane suits perfectly. This crane investment is our answer to our customers’ needs, and it also improves our service to our partners, explains the background to the crane acquisition.”
Port of Kokkola began solving the container crane issue by mapping the supply of little-used STS container cranes. A suitable crane was found in Poland.
“The price of the crane is a trade secret, but we were lucky that our team found this specimen,” continued Witting. “The prices of new cranes are very high. In this case, we got an excellent crane for a fraction of the cost of a new one. The investment is of a size class that is just right for the number of containers we expect to handle.”
Until now, containers have been handled in both the General Port and in the Silverstone Port. The newly-acquired crane will be placed in the Silverstone Port, where container traffic will be concentrated in the future. This is Kokkola’s first dedicated container crane it hopes to offer customers a productivity rate of at least 30 moves per ship hour.
The port receives regular weekly feeder calls from Hapag-Lloyd and MSC. It handled 8,802 TEU in the first nine months of this year, up 13.2% year-on-year.
The new equipment will help the Port of Kokkola handle more containers and in a faster manner (8,802 TEUs went through its quays over January-September 2023, +13.2% year-on-year, according to statistics from the Finnish Ports Association).
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