OREANDA-NEWS. June 20, 2008. In May 2008 National Container Company (NCC) and Konecranes Plc (Konecranes) signed a contract for production and delivery of 19 RTG (Rubber Tyred Gantry) cranes for NCC's container terminals. Procurement of handling equipment is part of NCC's terminal expansion and development plan.

The cranes will be delivered according to the NCC's terminals development program which envisages total investment of \\$1.7B to 2019 and the growth of the annual capacity up to 9M TEU.

The ordered equipment will increase throughput capacity of NCC's terminals and improve productivity. Eleven cable reel RTGs will be delivered to the terminal in Ust-Luga (ULCT), 150 km west of St.Petersburg, at the Baltic Sea. Four cable reel RTGs will be delivered to the NUTEP terminal in Novorossiysk at the Black Sea. The last four from this lot RTGs will be delivered to Ukrtranscontainer (UTC) in Illichivsk in Ukraine. The cranes for UTC have a lifting capacity of 45 tons and for ULCT and NUTEP - 50 tons.

"This is an important breakthrough for the environmental-friendly cable reel technology in the Baltic area," says Aku Lehtinen, Director, RTG cranes as Konecranes. "There is an increasing interest for environmental friendly solutions on the market."

The new cable reel RTG cranes reduce local emissions with 95 percent as the cranes run on electricity from the grid. They are also equipped with regenerative units, which means that excessive electricity is fed back to the grid. The cable reel technology is modular and can be installed on a crane at a later stage.

"NCC planes to purchase altogether 50 cranes of this standard. At our terminals we arrange operations by means of RTG cranes, most of which produced by Konecranes. Six cranes have already been working at UTC, fourteen more was ordered in September 2008 for FCT and Shushary terminal," - notes Evgeny Yuzhilin, Vice-President, terminal development at NCC.