This Summer, AAL Shipping (AAL) delivered four of the largest rubber tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) in the carrier’s history to the Port of Oslo (Oslo Havn KF), Norway. These new generation mobile units, measuring 36 m in height and 28 m in length, were transported from Taicang in China to Oslo on a single sailing aboard the 31,000 deadweight ‘mega-size’ multipurpose vessel (MPV), the AAL Pusan. The cranes were engineered and manufactured by Kalmar, part of Cargotec and Rainbow-Cargotec Industries Co. Ltd (RCI) in Taicang and will help to deal with the increased volume of container arrivals from Asia and Europe at Norway’s busiest port – a facility that handled 1.5 million metric tonnes of containers in 2019 alone.

The four cranes had a combined weight of almost 700 tonnes. Three of the cranes were fully erected and the fourth was loaded in parts, using the AAL Pusan’s port-side heavy lift cranes (700 tonnes max lift). They were transported from China to Norway along AAL’s monthly ‘Asia – Europe Trade Route’. They will be deployed at the Port of Oslo, Norway’s main logistics hub that handles about 80% of the country’s imported containerised goods.

Eike Muentz, General Manager Europe, AAL, commented; “This particular cargo was booked through our Finland office in Porvoo – part of our expanding European office network. Demand for regular and dependable services between Asia and Europe has grown exponentially in 2021, as markets rush to address shortfalls in scheduled development projects and shortages in general stock and commodity levels, depleted due to the pandemic lock-down of the past 18 months. In this sense, we are not just moving project heavy lift cargo like these cranes, but smaller breakbulk parcels, general cargoes, dry bulk commodities, steel, and containers.”

AAL operates one of the multipurpose shipping sector’s largest fleets of specialist MPV heavy lift vessels, comprising both mega-size (30,000+ deadweight tonnage) and smaller tonnage vessels. These are deployed worldwide, serving the carrier’s tailor-made tramp chartering services, regular fixed trade routes and scheduled monthly liner services.