Ainscough Crane Hire’s Heavy Cranes Team recently worked with its client, leading heavy transport company Collett & Sons, to help transport a vital piece of machinery to the Saltend Power Station in Hull.
Saltend Power Station is a CCGT (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine) CHP (Combined Heat & Power) power station located on the Humber Estuary.
The station has an output capacity of 1200 MW providing power to the UK electricity market, and power and steam to the adjacent Saltend Chemicals Park.
Ainscough was appointed by Collett & Sons to lift a 100t gas turbine rotor from a cargo plane to a 10-axle trailer ready to transport the rotor to the power plant.
The rotor touched down at Doncaster Sheffield Airport on board an Antonov 124, the world’s second-heaviest gross weight production cargo airplane and heaviest operating cargo aircraft. Utilising the airport’s 3,000 metre runway – one of the longest and widest in the UK – the heavy transport airplane landed ready to offload the cargo.
Collett Heavy Transport and Heavy Lift Teams were waiting airside to collect the gas turbine rotor, complete with Ainscough Crane Hire’s 500t Leibherr LTM 1500-8.1 mobile crane, along with an escort vehicle, 10-axle flat top trailer and ballasted Mercedes-Benz 8×4 Arocs SLT.
Collett’s Heavy Lift Engineers utilised Ainscough’s crane to unload the cargo from the Antonov Aircraft’s skid track before transporting it to Saltend.
Igor Scalas, Heavy Cranes Project Engineer, Ainscough Crane Hire, said: “We thoroughly enjoyed working with our colleagues at Collet & Sons to help this vital piece of machinery make its final journey to its new home at Saltend Power Station, where it will be an integral component of this vital facility. Thanks to close collaboration we were able to ensure this complex operation was completed to schedule.”
