Post-Panamax cranes arriving into Patrick Brisbane Terminal

Two of the tallest waterfront cranes in Australia have been delivered to Toll Group's Patrick container terminal at the Port of Brisbane.

They arrived on December 2 from China.

A Toll statement said the 108-metre high, AUD9 million ship-to-shore gantry cranes were just under Brisbane Airport flight path limitations. "They are equivalent in height to a 20-storey building," it said. They have a 75-tonne lifting capacity and weigh 118 tonnes.

The cranes were manufactured by Shanghai-based Zhenhua Port Machinery Company (ZPMC), a major quayside container and rubber-tyred gantry crane manufacturer, a Toll spokesperson said. ZPMC employs more than 800 engineers and distributes its products to 54 countries and regions and more than 120 ports worldwide, a ZPMC statement said.

Patrick's Brisbane manager Matt Hollamby said the cranes were delivered to move shipping containers from larger ships.

"These cranes will allow us to handle the biggest ships currently calling into Australia. They underline our commitment to the Port of Brisbane as the fastest growing Australian port," he said.

The statement said seven similar cranes had been delivered to Fremantle, Sydney and Melbourne ports in recent weeks. The Toll spokesperson said the cranes would take six to eight weeks to commission and would be operational in 2007.

The cranes are post panamax, which means they service ships too big to pass through the locks of the Panama Canal.

Brisbane-based port engineer and Cullen, Grummitt & Roe Group chairman Alan Grummitt said overdesign was a problem in the post-Panama era. In some cases ports were "shorter than ships" and he was concerned about global control of ship size.

"Ships grow, cranes get bigger, and equipment gets bigger. How big do we go? The largest vessel is now on the drawing board. Its turning basin will be 640 metres and there are very few ports that can accommodate this."