FINLAND-BASED crane manufacturer Konecranes has launched its first product specially developed for the emerging markets – the Boxhunter container handling crane.
The product is a completely new type of rubber-tired gantry (RTG) crane that will give the company access to a new market segment, Konecranes said in a press release.
“The launch is the first step in one of Konecranes’ main strategies – developing new mid-priced products especially for the emerging markets,” the company said.
The Boxhunter, launched on April 8 at the TOC Container Supply Chain Asia conference in Singapore, is the outcome of an intense product development effort that reinvented the design of today’s RTG cranes.
Konecranes Group’s president and CEO Pekka Lundmark was one of the key speakers at the conference.
Drawing on Konecranes’ proven, industry-leading technology, the design of the Boxhunter is built around the needs of container terminal customers who want the best but do not require all the features or the peak performance of the company’s top-of-the-range RTGs.
Rather than try and simplify an existing RTG design or rethink one through a series of incremental modifications to existing concepts, Konecranes said it had decided to brainstorm its entire approach from scratch.
“We did this by focusing on the operator and the user interface that we provide the operator with,” says Mika Mahlberg, the company’s vice-president for port cranes.
“The idea that we hit on was to turn things on their head, literally, and bring the operator down to the center of things in terms of stacking and moving containers: ground level.”
Mahlberg said traditionally, the operator’s cab in an RTG is at the top of the crane
“This is great for visibility over the containers, but with today’s sophisticated video technology it’s no longer essential,” Mahlberg said.
“We also decided to relocate most of the machinery used for driving the trolley and hoisting operations down to ground level as well. This simplifies the overall structure in a very important way and brings a new ease of access to this machinery as well, which is great from the service perspective.”
Konecranes noted that a simpler structure brings valuable savings in manufacturing costs. Despite a simpler structure the Boxhunter incorporates advanced video and laser technology that Konecranes has developed for its top-of- the-line Automated Stacking Cranes. Video cameras located at critical points around the crane and a sophisticated user interface in the cab give the operator excellent visibility everywhere he needs it.
As with all Konecranes container cranes, the Boxhunter can be equipped with extra operator-aiding, safety-enhancing features such as DGPS Autosteering. Truconnect®, Konecranes’ remote monitoring service, is also available with Boxhunter.
The new crane was launched in Singapore because Asia is very much the focus of growth today in the container handling industry, as in many others, Konecranes said.
“The Boxhunter is designed to maintain a steady, average level of performance, around 15+ container movements an hour, while still offering the high reliability and low downtime that lie at the heart of the Konecranes philosophy and brand,” the company said.
“There just isn’t a comparable RTG out there today that combines this level of innovation, this level of operator experience, and this level of reliable performance,” said Hannu Oja, Konecranes’ director of port crane technology.
“Customers buying the Boxhunter can also be assured that it offers the same safety and quality as our other products, because we never compromise with these things,” Oja said.
