Manufacturers of cranes are designing their technologies to provide greater l...

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“The metals industry is a challenging and intense environment for lifting equipment—often dealing with heavy loads and frequent lifts—and it’s useful for operators to have information about the duration and magnitude of the lifts a crane has made since installation, so that they can ensure they are not operating equipment beyond the intended design life,” says Pimblett.

Monitoring equipment from Street Crane informs users whether they are operating a crane within the SWP and therefore complying with UK industry regulations, including the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER) and Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER), as well as rigorous checks from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

“Thanks to the internet, we are now testing a new technology that can transmit information at an economic price from the SWP monitor on the crane to a variety of remote devices including a PC or a radio control handset,” adds Pimblett.

Headquartered in the Peak District, about 30km south-east of Manchester, Street manufacturers both full cranes and crane components with about three-quarters of its sales exported outside the UK. “We’ve had our best ever year,” explains Pimblett, who recently stepped down as managing director at the company, a position which he held since 1990. According to the company, remote control is another key demand from users in this sector, with Street Crane offering solutions through its Street Sabre product. The system is said to provide robust performance and safety compliance, protecting operator, equipment and load, while allowing up to 50 controllers to operate simultaneously in a single factory. “It’s rarely appropriate to use pendant control in a metals distribution environment, so the wireless option can give operators more flexibility and be more economical,” continues Pimblett. In this segment, Street Crane recently delivered five heavy-duty overhead cranes to increase capacity at Tata Steel’s Round Oak terminal in the West Midlands, UK, which can hold up to 60,000 tonnes of steel.

Business in the sector has been positive recent months, says Comiono, with the company’s key markets the US and Germany, where EMH works with local partner Gloning.

“We recently had a significant order of a 30t crane for a coil handling company in the south-west of the US, with the customer set to install three more of our cranes at its facility,” says Comiono. Meanwhile, Juan Agirre, sales director at GH Cranes and Components—based in the north of Spain, about 80km southeast of Bilbao—notes that customers are increasingly looking for reliability, as well as robustness, high speeds, sway control, plus accurate load positioning and identification.

Projects GH been involved with in recent months include for steel manufacturer Acerinox, which was supplied with five cranes and a motorised hook to handle stainless steel coils with tong.

In addition, the company sold one automatic crane for handling steel sheets with an electromagnet to a steel service centre in northern Spain, as well as ten cranes for handling steel coils for the automotive industry for Gonvvama in China.

Manufacturers of cranes are designing their technologies to provide greater levels of safety for operators