APM Terminals Bahrain has announced it has finalised the order for four new ship-to-shore cranes to be installed at the Bahrain Gateway at Khalifa Bin Salman Port in Hidd.

The cranes are part of a $62 million investment APM Terminals is making in Khalifa Bin Salman Port - Bahrain Gateway, which is scheduled to be operational by the end of next year.

APM Terminals Bahrain maintenance and repairs general manager Stefan Korsinek said that the new cranes are being manufactured by ZPMC in their dedicated crane manufacturing facility in Shanghai, and are scheduled to be delivered in May next year.

The cranes have a container lifting capacity of 65 tonnes, and will be able to handle vessels that are up to 18 containers wide. They are fitted also with twin-lift spreaders to be able to lift two containers at a time.

In a statement the firm described the cranes as "huge" - with a 30-metre span, and it said with their boom up the cranes are close to the height of a 30-storey building.

The cranes will enable APM Terminals Bahrain to handle the sixth generation container vessels capable of carrying 6,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs), which are substantially larger than the cargo vessels serving the region today.

The new equipment will form the backbone of the company's aim to provide a world-class port to companies looking to use Bahrain as a hub for trade in the Gulf, it said.

"In addition, APM Terminals has just received delivery of some of the latest, most efficient and safest equipment for the handling of unusually over height containers shipments," Korsinek said. - TradeArabia News Service