Foreign personnel are leaving the north east of the country as pro-regime fighters draw closer to Benghazi. Only minimal defences are being prepared around the city and it will likely be assaulted by an increasingly confident pro-regime military. Casualties are likely to rise over the coming days. Air strikes and even attacks around the harbour from Libyan naval vessels should be expected. There are rumours that pro-Gaddafi military units have taken control of the crossing point at the border. However, AKE personnel have assessed the
situation and saw no evidence of this.

The WAMS service has been linking the North American west coast and Central American west coast, including Mexico, with Cartagena in Colombia since the beginning of the year 2010. The expanded service now also includes Hamburg and some other ports in northern Europe. In 2010, Hamburg’s container traffic with North and Central America increased by almost 16 per cent compared with the previous year.

On the occasion of the inaugural arrival of the new service in Hamburg, Jörg Pollmann, Port Captain of the Port of Hamburg, presented the captain of the CAP PALMERSTON, Mario Pamute, with the Admiralty coat of arms of the Port of Hamburg. Representatives of Hamburg Süd and Port of Hamburg Marketing were also on board to welcome the new service.
“By including Hamburg in the expanded WAMS service, Hamburg Süd can now offer a fast, direct connection with comprehensive port coverage between northern Europe and the U.S. west coast. Moreover, the inclusion of the two hub ports of Tangier and Cartagena provides outstanding connections to the Caribbean Basin, the east and west coasts of South America and the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent,” explains Uwe Gaede, Director Area Germany, Marketing and Sales for Hamburg Süd.

The expanded service will use ten ships with a capacity of 1,700 TEU each. Hamburg Süd will contribute eight units, and CCNI two. The complete rotation of the service takes 70 days and includes the following ports: Hamburg, Le Havre, Cartagena, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Vancouver, Oakland, Long Beach, Manzanillo, Lazaro Cardenas, Puerto Quetzal, Cartagena, Tangier, Rotterdam, Tilbury and back to Hamburg.

The machine is supported by two purpose built rail mounted gantry cranes each fitted with 2 trolley’s and with full remote control.  Through access is via a continuous rail system with “Hanger” type doors. Building design was optimised for energy efficiency and minimal environmental impact. Liebherr is renowned as a reputable manufacturer of high quality container handling cranes with experience dating back to the sixties.  To date more than 350 container cranes have been delivered to over 40 countries on all five continents. This new investment at the Killarney site is a further example of LIEBHERR’s commitment to quality through manufacturing excellence and will give further assurance to both existing and potential clients in respect of quality and longevity.     

The cassettes are detachable steel platforms, which containers will be loaded on for transporting. The translifter is a self-loading trailer with 62-tonnes loading capacity. This design allows it to be coupled to any universal towing tractor. These manually operated vehicles lift and move the cassettes using hydraulic systems. The translifter is lowered and driven underneath the cassette and then raised until the cargo is loaded for further transportation.

The delivery is set to meet the expanding demands of the terminal’s traffic which has doubled since container operations were moved from NIT (Norfolk International Terminal) to the APM terminal in Portsmouth Virginia over the summer, amounting to in excess of 1 million TEU of additional traffic. This move was the result of a deal where Virginia Port Authority (VPA) is leasing the operations from APM Terminals and was signed in July 2010.

In 2007 TTS Port Equipment AB designed and supplied the port’s container handling system. With this additional delivery there will be in total 20 translifters and 420 cassettes in operation in the APM Terminal.

The initial contract to equip the new terminal allowed TTS the opportunity to roll out its revolutionary container handling system for the first time in the US. The Gothenburg-based company had studied operations in many container terminals worldwide and found that most are still using methods that have been in place for many years, operators typically increasing capacity by buying greater quantities of equipment rather than considering new ways of handling cargo.

TTS found that container terminal managers are now having to rethink their approach to container handling as many terminals are reaching capacity limits. And there are several, often conflicting goals, such as to serve a container ship as fast as possible, while also minimising terminal equipment costs.

 “In our container terminal system the cassette acts as a floating buffer between container cranes and the terminal transport vehicles that transfer containers to or from a road or rail carrier,” says Michel Lyrstrand, Vice President, R&D at TTS Port Equipment AB. “Using this system, containers are quickly and easily disconnected from expensive terminal transport equipment, thus ensuring that the cranes continue to operate without stopping. This floating buffer concept is the key to our innovation in the container terminal market.”

The initial briefing from APM Terminals tasked TTS with supplying the technology to expedite cargo movement while keeping workers and drivers safe. The new equipment enables increased productivity, as drivers no longer have to leave the cab to decouple it from loads. Thus fewer trucks are needed to handle the same amount of containers, causing less environmental damage, and saving time and money.

“The decision to run port operations using the TTS handling system has been fully validated,” says Jeffrey A. Florin, Deputy Executive Director, Operations Chief Operating Officer at VPA. “The tractors and trailer sets conventionally used in most US terminal operations would not have met the efficiency demands of our current traffic levels, so we are very happy with the TTS container transfer method.”