14,400 kilometers, 53 days and 4 different ships: logistical masterpieces were required to bring a mobile crane to the location on the southernmost continent of the world. A review.
December 21, 2017. Three days before Christmas, Schmidbauer receives approval from the German Aerospace Center (DLR): A Liebherr LTM 1040-2.1 mobile crane is to be transported to the Antarctic to convert a polar research station. “This started a race against time for us,” recalls Minka St. James, project manager for the Antarctic mission at Schmidbauer. "We had to ship the crane two weeks later, otherwise we would have lost a whole year." Because the logistics options in the Antarctic are extremely limited.
Another challenge resulted from strict environmental regulations: To protect the penguins living on the island, ships cannot approach the jetty of the research station directly. Instead, they have to load their cargo onto pontoons around two kilometers off the coast. The flat floats, reminiscent of rafts, can only transport loads of up to 8 t. Within two weeks, Schmidbauer not only had to organize the demanding transport to Antarctica – the crane also had to be disassembled and the re-assembly had to be planned on site.
“Despite the difficult conditions, it was clear to us that a delay is not an option,” explains Minka St. James. At the beginning of January, the crane left in individual parts Schmidbauer headquarters in Gräfelfing near Munich.
Its first destination: the port of Hamburg. From there, the route led in several stages along the North Atlantic and the west coast of South America to Antarctica.
Equipment:
Location: O’Higgins, Antarctic
Period: Since December 2017
You can read the whole story of the "Journey into Eternal Ice" here:
https://www.liebherr.com/de/deu/aktuelles/storys/mobilkran-antarktis/mobilkran-antarktis.html
Read our press release under News & Press or on vertical.net:
Schwerstarbeit im ewigen Eis: Spezialkran von Schmidbauer nimmt Arbeit in der Antarktis auf
https://vertikal.net/de/news/beitrag/33446/schwerstarbeit-im-schelfeis
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/dlr-empfangsstation-inuvik-himmlische-erddaten-im-norden.732.de.html?dram:article_id=495760
