Highlights: The Port of Thunder Bay
“Hwy H2O HIGHLIGHTS†focuses on our member ports and companies throughout the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System with stories that highlight innovative and interesting cargo movements; changes and improvements that ports and companies are making to create greater opportunity, and/or member insights on the latest market trends.
Highlights: The Port of Thunder Bay
Cargo handling at Keefer Terminal just got a big boost. Thunder Bay Port Authority’s new Liebherr LHM 320 Mobile Crane arrived at the terminal on July 13 aboard the MV BBC Delaware. The crane was loaded onto the vessel in California and travelled through the Panama Canal and the St. Lawrence Seaway before reaching Thunder Bay. The crane was erected over a two-week period by a group of local workers led by a Liebherr Service Engineer from the United States. With a lifting capacity of 104 tonnes at an 18 metre reach, the crane expands the cargo handling capabilities of Keefer Terminal. Keefer is Thunder Bay’s first-class general cargo facility which handles project cargoes destined for wind farms, mines and the Oilsands in western Canada.
The new Liebherr LHM 320 Mobile Harbour Crane lifted its first cargo Friday, August 31 at Keefer Terminal. The Netherlands-flagged vessel MV Vikingbank arrived in port on the Thursday evening with a load of wind turbine tower components originating in Spain. The towers are now staged in Keefer Terminal’s intermodal yard for rail shipment to a wind farm in the Western United States.
The crane is state of the art with the capability to handle project cargo, break bulk and containers. The crane can also clam bulk materials at rates of up to 1,100 tonnes per hour. The new crane has modernized cargo handling in the Port of Thunder Bay, adding to the competitiveness of the Seaway route as a supply chain the Western Canada.
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