 Stefan Johansson |
Kalmar has signed a partnership agreement with its customer, Global Service of Livorno, Italy, to create a reach stacker prototype using dual-fuel technology for diesel and LNG.
The industrial truck maker is the primary external industrial partner of the GREENCRANES pilot action, and Global Service, a major player in the Italian equipment rental business, is the leader of the pilot.
The prototype, based on a Kalmar DRF400-450 reach stacker equipped with a Cummins QSM11 engine that is converted to run on LNG, is expected to be ready at the end of this month. GREENCRANES staff will be asked to assist in the test phase.
A public demonstration of the pilot will take place on 4 December at the Port of Livorno.
Stefan Johansson, director of business development and product marketing for Kalmar, tells
Forkliftaction.com News that the project was inspired by the "trend for greener technology and the interest for LNG use as well as its availability". "[More and more] shipping vessels are also equipped with LNG power."
Johansson says the project is financed by the European Union and Trans-European Network for Transport.
The prototype is expected to deliver significant results in terms of an environmentally friendly operation through reduced environmental impact and energy consumption.
Green Technologies and Eco-Efficient Alternatives for Cranes and Operations at Port Container Terminals (GREENCRANES) is a project involving three member states - Spain, Italy and Slovenia - and includes public administration, strategic ports, port industrial partners and innovation centres.
The project aims to study and define methods and measures to describe port container terminals' energy profiles and analyse different eco-efficient technologies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while increasing their productivity.
It also aims to carry out pilot deployments of different potential solutions, extract relevant results from the pilot actions to be disseminated to as many port container terminals as possible and define standards that support the swift investment in these technologies in Europe.