HAMBURG: May 09, 2017 – Hansa Heavy Lift (HHL) has moved two 870 tonnes cranes from a decommissioned power station at London's port of Tilbury to Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Tilbury Power Station was built as a coal-powered station and then converted to run on 100 percent biomass fuel before it closed in 2013.

The former power station site is now being considered for a £100 million new port complex. Forth Ports, which owns Tilbury Port, bought the land in March last year.

The proposed new facility, known as Tilbury 2, would be built on 51 hectares of the power staton site and include a new deep water container jetty and RoRo terminal.

The removal of the two cranes was particularly complicated by having to rely on 28-year-old handmade drawings with no precise weight or centre of gravity data, according to Emek Ersin Takmaz, head of Projects for HHL's Engineering Department.

"Further, these cranes were not designed to be lifted, mandating a complex lifting arrangement which required specialist engineering expertise," he said.

The units were eventually loaded from the power station site to the HHL Tokyo via a spacer barge due to a tidal range of six meters that prohibited direct vessel access.

HHL's commercial, engineering, and operations teams provided a first-class service throughout the project said Scott Lang, project manager for the Armitt Group that aranged the charter. "They worked professionally, thoroughly, and technically to overcome every eventuality that occurred as a result of the limited information available of these aged units," he continued.