While the shipping industry is still struggling to come out of the recent global recession, one segment is holding out hope. Heavy lift and project cargo sector may be singularly the biggest prop for shipping industry if we take a cue from the situation during 2009.
That year, heavy lift sector accounted for a major part of shipping activities as well as offshore industry.
The shipbuilding industry everywhere is still reeling under pressure. Orders of newbuildings are being cancelled on a large scale. Most of the shipyards are yet to deliver ships that were commissioned before the economic slowdown set in. It will be another year or so when the real impact unfolds for the shipyards from South Korea to Europe, and China to India. But many experts believe that recovery in shipbuilding will be faster than that in other segments of the shipping industry. According to Lars Rolner, managing director of Schiffahrtskontor Altes Land (SAL), "The global economic crisis has had an effect on the sector. However, we are already seeing signs that the market will recover in 2011."
SAL commissioned the Sietas shipyard last year for two next-generation heavy-lift vessels at a cost of 120 million euro. "The heavy lift sector is helping inject a welcome ray of optimism into the offshore and shipping industries.”
The growing move towards heavier lifting operations at increasingly greater depths is one trend that seems universally tipped to continue into the future, along with the concomitant development of ultra-deepwater technologies to extend offshore crane capacity. Two of such technologies are MacGREGOR's fibre-rope technology, which overcomes the limits imposed by the weight of traditional steel wire at depth, and the electro-hydraulic drive systems of Liebherr's new MTC 78000 crane, which is one of the largest offshore slewing cranes in the world. Many other technological breakthroughs will surely follow.
Two months after the first MTC 78000 was delivered to the heavy load vessel OSA Goliath, Jumbo's fourth and latest J Class vessel, MV Jumbo Jubilee, set a new tandem heavy-lift record during tests at the Huisman yard in Schiedam. At 1,992t, the ballasted pontoon lifted by the two 900t mast cranes the heaviest load ever for a heavy-lift transport ship exceeded the required 10% over combined safe working load to meet Lloyd's Certificate of Compliance conditions by 12t.
On the very same Saturday in August, and just five miles further east at Krimpen aan den Ijssel, another record was being made as the Oleg Strashnov was launched for Seaway Heavy Lifting. Equipped with 5,000t crane capacity, this is the largest mono-hull heavy-lift vessel in the world and the largest ship ever built by IHC Merwede.
These are, however, no match with the Balder and Hermod semi-submersible crane vessels which revolutionised the sector in 1979. Thirty years later, “bigger, stronger, deeper” remains just as relevant a catch line as before. Follow this rolling momentum to its logical conclusion and many believe that a natural and obvious impetus emerges that will inevitably tend to favour designing cranes with greater capacity and height. If so, then the challenge here may lie in how effectively novel heavy-lift technologies can be outlined, how readily any new breed of supercranes can be fabricated and how large a part aging and obsolescence will ultimately play in dictating what constitutes a cost-effective and time-efficient lift.
Another factor that will abet the heavy lift sector is the offshore exploration industry. A large number of platforms are set to be decommissioned. Neither the physical challenge of removing infrastructure offshore, nor the attendant procurement logistics seem destined to be straightforward.
It is, then, hardly surprising that both Liebherr's new crane and the Oleg Strashnov should have been designed with just such projects firmly in mind. But in looking at the wider context it becomes clear that safety is the one over-arching issue that, in various guises, appears set to dominate much of the industry's thinking over the coming years. While the principal focus naturally falls on risk analysis, planning and the directly operational aspects of the lifts, driving the proliferation of leading-edge safety features within equipment, one recently formed sector group suggests that there is a more insidious challenge to face.
The International Council of Heavy Lift and Project Cargo Carriers, or the Heavy Lift Club, says the tremendous growth in containerisation has transformed the face of ports and stevedoring in such as way where safety is compromised for break-bulk and heavy-lift shippers.
Port authorities the world over are more inclined towards developing container terminals, and development of heavy lift facilities are neglected. Heavy Lift Club chairman Jan Boje Steffens says that although this may not be true universally, in many parts of the world, the lack of dock labourers trained in heavy lift and the growing use of workers who are rather familiar with container operations have undermined the safety of cargo handling.
If we are to go by Lars Rolner's outlook for recovery, the heavy lift sector is poised for better times. However, it is still uncertain what exact opportunities are in store. Issues relating to ultra-deep lifts, modularisation, decommissioning, safety, extending crane capacity and the production of bigger and better heavy lift vessels and equipment are still in the limelight.
Just like in the previous decade, insurmountable market forces and technological innovation will continue to determine the shape of the sector in the next decade too.
At the founding of the Heavy Lift Club in May, Steffens was keen to stress the importance of this technology and the heavy-lift sector in general on global infrastructure. "Heavy-lift and project cargo carriers are crucial to world infrastructure, which affects everyone. The work of heavy-lift and project cargo carriers is not only important, it is specialised," he said.