By Michelle Crean

Three Liebherr Ship to Shore container cranes (STS) - which are amongst some of the largest in the world - have left Killarney ahead of their American destination.

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The STS are currently being assembled and shipped from Cork Dockyard in Cobh and set to arrive at the port of New York and New Jersey within the next two weeks.

At the time of writing, one of the cranes - with a span of 30.48m, a back reach of 22.9m, an outreach of 69.5m and a lift height over rail of 53.34 - has been successfully loaded on to the specialist heavy lift vessel, BigLift Baffin. Over the next few days, the remaining two cranes will be loaded in preparation for their upcoming voyage which will take place early next week. Sailing time to the USA is approximately 10 days.

The cranes, for Liebherr customer Maher Terminals LLC, were designed and built at Liebherr Container Cranes in Killarney. Once manufactured, the main crane components were transported to the Port of Fenit where they were shipped to Cobh for assembly.

"Liebherr secured the contract for these cranes in 2021 and since then our expert teams of engineers and designers have been working hard with our customers and partners to bring this project to fruition," Trevor O'Donoghue from Liebherr told the Killarney Advertiser.

"This is the third shipment of Liebherr STS container cranes to have shipped from Cobh. Previously we have shipped three STS cranes to Puerto Rico and a further two to the Port of Hull in the UK, but these are the largest STS to ship from Cobh. These advanced STS container cranes are amongst the largest in the world and will be handling the world’s largest container vessels with up to 24 container rows stacked across the deck."

One particularly interesting feature about this project is that the cranes will ship partially assembled, with the upper structure (boom, beam and A-frame) sitting on the lower structure for the voyage. This is to keep the overall height of the shipped cranes low enough to pass under Bayonne Bridge which connects NY and NJ.

When they arrive Stateside, they will anchor off Sandy Hook, where final preparations for passing under the bridge will be made. The vessel will wait for an exceptionally low tide, before passing under Bayonne Bridge in what is sure to be a spectacular sight.

Once the cranes pass under the bridge, they will arrive at Maher terminals where they will be rolled off the ship and assembled in their final configuration before entering service.