Just this week, a devastating crash occurred during load testing in an offshore wind farm installation vessel in Rostock, Germany. Investigation on the cause of the giant crane’s crash is still underway, with major damage to the hull. Industry officials who are based in Asia stated that the structure stayed afloat despite the amount of damage.
Footage of the unfortunate event was captured by Offshorewind EU and can be viewed here.
It was confirmed that an unidentified Chinese company has been providing the engineering, procurement and construction works on the vessel. The crane was completed in February while the hull was finalised in October, then sent to the Liebherr Rostock port in Germany for installation works.
The supplier for the HLC 295000 crane, Liebher, advised that the length of just the HLC boom has a length of 160 metres and a height of 90 metres. It is designed to lift about nine A380 aircrafts at once, a lifting capacity of five thousand tonnes, and provides optimum flexibility to handle a multitude of heavy items. The purpose of the crane is to lift to a height of about 180 metres which is equivalent to double the height of New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty.
The vessel operator is GeoSea, a subsidiary of the DEME Group of Belgium, and basic design has been given by C-Job, a Dutch engineering company.
As of now, there is no confirmation if the unfortunate accident will cause operation delays as it is due to start in 2022.
Source: Upstream online