Italy’s first Automated rail mounted gantry cranes (ARMG) have arrived at APM Terminals Vado Ligure, in the north part of the country, after a long journey of about four months from China. The cranes will be used in the new container terminal due for completion in 2019.
The six are the first of 21 fully automated Gantry Cranes cranes to be delivered. According to APM, they can handle up to six stacked containers and they can be are operated remotely by highly specialised operators who work from a control room, which is currently under construction.
No other port operator in Italy uses this kind of crane. And even within Europe, they are rare.Worldwide, fully automated port terminals have only started to appear over the last three to four years.
However, human intervention will still be fundamental: other than monitoring and coordinating the cranes movements, teams of operators will deal with periodical maintenance which is a fundamental activity. For these operators, APM Terminals has implemented training courses which will start in the next months.
Unloading of the six cranes in the port of Vado took operators around 10 days. Routine testing will now follow.