ALE has performed the weighing, transportation and load-out of five spars, weighing 3,585 tonnes each, at the Fene Shipyard in Ferrol, Spain for Statoil's Hywind floating wind farm project.
ALE used jacks and weighing cells to carry out the weighing operation of the spars.
The spars, which measured 91 m in length and 14 m wide, were then transported from the construction site, to the loading dock or to the intermediate storage area, using four sets of trolleys connected to four hydraulic points.
ALE designed and manufactured transport cradles in which to sit the spars and consecutively loaded them on board an Offshore Heavy Transport (OHT) vessel.
Once the first spar was loaded, the vessel was rotated 180 degrees for the loading-out of the second spar. ALE used 30 ramps, measuring 5 m long, to access the ship from the pier.
In a separate project, ALE loaded-out two ship-to-shore (STS) cranes at the Noatum terminal in Malaga, Spain.
Before the load-out operation, ALE assembled 29 m modular transport beams under the brackets. The cranes, which weighed 1,250 tonnes each, were subsequently loaded-out using 66 axle lines of self-propelled modular transporters (SPMT).
The STS cranes were transported to the Noatum terminal in Valencia, Spain onboard a BigRoll Shipping vessel. Upon arrival in Valencia, ALE performed the load-in operation, using 66 axle lines of SPMT in the same configuration.
ALE was then tasked with positioning the STS cranes onto their foundations.
