A ship carrying the US West Coast’s largest container cranes has arrived on 23 February to the port of Tacoma. Puget Sound Pilots boarded the ‘Zhen Hua 28’, a 761-foot-long heavy-lift ship, early Friday morning in Port Angeles and headed to Tacoma.
The ship will sit at anchor in Commencement Bay for a day or two before delivering the cranes to Husky Terminal at the northwest end of the Blair Waterway.
The Northwest Seaport Alliance ordered eight new super-post-Panamax cranes from Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd (ZPMC) in China through a competitive bid process, as no container cranes currently are manufactured in the US.
ZPMC is the largest heavy-duty equipment manufacturer in the world and delivers more than 200 cranes every year around the world, including many seaports in the US. The other four cranes will arrive in 2019.
When they arrive, they will be installed at Husky Terminal, which is undergoing about $250 million in terminal improvements since September 2016 on Tacoma’s General Central Peninsula.
Upgrades include strengthening and realigning a berth and adding eight new super-post-Panamax cranes capable of serving two 18,000-TEU container ships at the same time.
The new cranes will have an outreach of 24 containers and a lift height of 165 feet above the pier deck.