Crane overboard off IJmuiden

A container crane has toppled from a pontoon barge off Ijmuiden, en route from Amsterdam to Rotterdam

A "deafening silence" surrounds the incident, which occurred yesterday morning (20th December) about 20 n/m off IJmuiden. None of the parties involved will comment on what happened or why, or where the cranes were to be delivered.


The main contractor for the shipment is Muller towage and salvage of Dordrecht. The tug was supplied by Kotug and the pontoon by Heerema.

The lost crane was one of a shipment of three being transported to Rotterdam from AMT (Amsterdam Marine Terminals) at Amsterdam Westhaven. They were sold by Hutchison Port Holdings and are understood to be about 40 years old.

AMT became an HPH subsidiary when the Hong Kong-based global terminal operator purchased all the former Ceres Paragon facilities in Amsterdam from NYK Line.

ECT, which manages the Amsterdam terminals, stated that it had sold the three cranes to an Antwerp trading firm, and that it understood they were destined to be scrapped. A spokesman for the Dutch waterways authority Rijkswaterstaat said it had understood that the cranes had been entirely stripped of their components.

The two surviving cranes were headed for the Uniport container terminal on a temporary basis, and it is understood that they will be refurbished and converted to steel handling for use by Steinweg.

This publicity-shy Dutch stevedore has a track record in crane bargains. It has already converted former Uniport container cranes for a new life using magnet spreaders at its steel slabs (ThyssenKrupp Stahl) terminal at the Maasvlakte. This is the cranes' third life, as Uniport had converted them to container handling from coal work.

More recently the two widespan (16 rail tracks) STS cranes at CTL Lübeck have been redeployed, following a reduction in rail span, at a Steinweg terminal in Amsterdam.

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