Wellington Seafood Hub | Aluminium Gantry Crane and Hoist

Port Nicholson Fisheries is 100% owned by Aotearoa's indigenous Māori peoples and has grown to become the country’s second-largest exporter of live lobster, embodying the traditional values of authenticity, responsible harvest of seafood resources, and deep respect for their communities.

As part of the refurbishment project for their Wellington Seafood Hub they required a overhead gantry crane for lifting basket cradles of live seafood in and out of nine salt water tanks.

There were a couple of key challenges that they faced which meant we were approached by Darren Giles owner at DGi Architecture Limited to see if we could assist.

Firstly, being that they were working in a salt water environment which is highly corrosive, the solution they wanted, had to avoid the use of the standard mild steel beams.

Secondly, due to a row of portal columns in line with the ends of the salt water tanks where the baskets cradles were lifted from prevented a girder crane from covering the full width of the tank plus the pick up and drop of location outside of the tanks.

Lastly, the crane needed to be suspended from overhead building structure, so minimising the weight of the crane was important.

After a number of discovery meetings with the client and the architect, Stratalign came up with a complete designed, build, installed, certified and commissioned solution.

To meet the clients challenges we used an anodised aluminium profile overhead gantry crane system manufactured by Erikkila in Finland.    Firstly, anodised aluminium  meant that the beams were better suited for a corrosive environment.  Secondly, as aluminium has a lower weight to standard cranes it minimised the cost to reinforce the overhead building structure.

The crane featured two bridges with telescopic extensions on the bridges so the crane could reach out sideways into the gaps between the portal columns to pick up and drop of the basket cradles into these positions.

The crane movements were powered in all directions and controlled with radio remotes so that the operator could work from a safe distance from the salt water tanks.

The client and architect were happy with the final result.