AAL Shipping has recently safely transported eight giant juice tanks on a single sailing from Taicang Port in China to Setúbal in Portugal, 50 kilometres south of Lisbon. The cargo will be carried on its 31,000 deadweights mega-size A-Class heavy lift vessel, AAL Kobe, along its famous ‘Asia – Europe’ Trade Route, in a vessel conversion at the Lisnave Shipyard.
The tanks were stowed on deck, and extensive operational planning was required to address multiple operational challenges in the lifting and transporting of these over-dimensional 150-tonne units, each measuring 12 metres x 12 metres x 16.5 metres and posing visibility restrictions on their journey. They were safely discharged at the Portuguese shipyard, where they will be installed into a bulk carrier, transforming the vessel into a fruit juice tanker.
Yahaya Sanusi, Deputy Head of Transport Engineering at AAL, commented, “We initially had to ensure that a specially designed lifting beam could, in fact, be aligned, connected, and lifted without mechanical support from the weather deck of the AAL Kobe to the tanks’ trunnions located at 12 metres height. Thanks to the vessel’s incredible crane height and tailormade lifting beam, we could stow the units successfully on deck.”
“The goalposts then changed midway through the project, when our initial discharge to quayside plan was replaced by a more ambitious proposal involving the discharge of the heavy lift units directly to the soon-to-be-converted bulk carrier. After extensive modelling and risk assessment by our engineering team, the original plan was reinstated. We also overcame a very shallow vessel draft and other operational restrictions at a discharge port using extensive modelling, bathymetric surveys, tides, mooring, and risk analyses. This provided the data and operational transparency required for AAL to handle the tanks safely using only the ship cranes. All plans were carefully screened and approved by the local port authority, insurers, and other project stakeholders.”
Lastly, Christophe Grammare, Managing Director at AAL, concluded, “With almost 95 per cent of AAL’s fleet now owned and controlled by us, we can ensure that busy trade lanes – especially those that connect Asia, with key trading markets in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia – are served with the required frequency of sailings all year round. Additionally, we have boosted our engineering and operations capability across all key markets and time zones, which is well demonstrated on this project, when rapidly changing operational criteria and local restrictions needed to be addressed at a local level and smartly.”