Ship-to-shore gantry crane market may well change as trade tensions simmer and may yet come to a boil
 Shaving off operational expenses in cargo handling is one way of meeting rising environmental compliance costs that are a challenge to world shipping.
There is a consensus among container terminal operators that some solutions are better than others and that much of the cost-cutting can be achieved at the intermodal transfer stage from ship to shore then on to truck and train.
Europe has its own ship-to-shore gantry crane industry, but it has long lost ground to China. In 2004, the UK's Port Strategy journal said that China had half the global market. Today's China's market share is reckoned at 75 per cent.
Not surprisingly China - that is Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company (ZPMC) - beats all on price and its ability to ship cranes fully erect in near turnkey condition.
Europeans crane makers are Liebherr, which got its start designing cranes to re-build bombed cities in postwar Germany. Then there is Finland's Konecranes, which started in 1910 as Kone building overhead travelling cranes for the forestry industry, and late comer Cargotec, also from Finland, which was a spinoff from Konecranes to achieve a stock listing in 2005.
None of these are price competitive with China. But they do deliver on time and pride themselves on after sales service. And with a renewed cold war coming to a simmer if not a boil - and with China flexing its military muscle there is hope that European crane makers may recover market share as the world democracies once again draw the wagons in a circle against communist dictatorships.
At Liebherr, for example, cranes are preassembled, but not erected, at its Killarney plant in Co Kerry in the west of Ireland. "All joints are assembled and checked, all drives are tested under load conditions, but because of where we are and the infrastructure at the port we ship from, we cannot ship in fully erect condition," said a company spokesman.
"So we normally charter a vessel with heavy-lift gear, load the pre-assembled components and erect on site, usually in a convenient location so as not to interfere with terminal operations." Typically, erection takes 8-12 weeks.
"We are concerned about cranes being shipped in a fully erect condition," he said, "particularly in rough seas where they're likely to experience stresses in the structure. I know there are experts out there who will analyse these stresses on the cranes during shipment and with bracing, etc, but we still prefer to ship our cranes in large pre-assembled units so the customer knows there are no stresses already built into the structure as a result of the transport.
"Another benefit of doing it the way we do is that we're putting money back into the local economy by employing local labour and supervisors to assist at the erection site."
Said a Yorkshire Teesport customer: "Delivery time was very important for us and from signing to commissioning was around 12 months. I was seriously impressed with the Kalmar. It was an excellent crane. But we'd had 10 good years with another Liebherr and I think that did sway us."
On the erection issue he makes an important point, he said: "For our operators it would be nice if it just arrived and was put in place on the quay ready for work. But from an engineering viewpoint, when it comes in pieces, we put a fitter and an electrician on the job during the commissioning stage so we learn while the manufacturer's team is still here.
"We get a lot of valuable training time that way because there are always bugs. If it's brought in already erected on a barge, we don't get all that extra time before it gets used 'in anger'," he said.
Others say Chinese-built cranes have had the same problems with ZPMC having had to retrofit cranes with extra strengthening. The Teesport man points to the view that the longer established manufacturers have been through the learning curves of building cranes and know what they can and cannot get away with.
Following damage to quay cranes in Busan wrought by a typhoon, the need to be wary of structural integrity issues is very real.
Another European port engineer made a valid point in favour of shipping the crane fully erect. He said that because of space constraints at his port, for the last three or four crane orders they had not been able to consider erecting on site.
"So we roll the crane straight onto the quay rather than spend three months assembling it here. That situation restricts some of the European suppliers as they don't have the facility to ship fully erect cranes from their factory."
Theoretically, shipping a crane on a long sea voyage does no harm. The cranes are analysed for the accelerations on the voyage and they have special bracings fitted. Cosmetically this may be a nuisance because these bits have to be removed and there is regrinding and painting which is not ideal either. But if you don't want an erection site in your port then receiving it duly assembled is the answer.
Then again, depending on local legislation, there may be responsibilities the terminal has to take on in terms of health and safety when hosting the assembly team on your land. Certainly under the UK's liability laws, even though it may be the manufacturer's site, a terminal operator cannot walk away from what amount to his responsibilities as a landlord.
What do other manufacturers think? Kalmar, part of Helsinki-based Cargotec, has avoided bids outside Europe in the past because transport costs would make delivered prices uncompetitive: "But there's a healthy demand in Europe and we can serve that market quite well," said a Kalmar spokesman.
"We can ship fully erect, semi erect or in bits and pieces. It always depends on the customer's situation. Shipping a crane fully erect is a rather expensive way to do it as long as you have to buy the shipping capacity in the open market. For the Chinese it's a different story but for us it is very expensive."
But there may be advantages for the customer particularly if they need cranes delivered to an existing terminal in an operational environment, the commissioning time can be reduced to a few weeks so it would make sense."
Such is the state of the ship to shore market, in which China is highly price competitive, and may well be the best buy for the money. But times are changing in the diplomatic world and what may well have been a good buy a few years ago is looking less attractive today.
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