June 21 - Emil Egger, a transport and heavy haulage contractor based in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland has taken delivery of a Liebherr LR11000 crawler crane.
According to Liebherr, the LR11000 is the first 1,000-tonne capacity crawler crane operated by a Swiss crane contractor and is the first crawler crane in Emil Egger's fleet, which previously only included mobile cranes.
The LR11000 features the ballast system VarioTray, a detachable ballast plate for the crane's derrick boom. If the entire counterweight is not required for a lift, a centre section of the suspended ballast weighing up to 160 tonnes can be removed and used separately.
This innovation will be utilised for the crane's first project at a construction site in Zurich, where for the next six months it will lift supports with weights from 25 to 58 tonnes. For the heavy units, which include facade components weighing up to 90 tonnes, and units with a large radius, the derrick ballast plate is bolted on before moving the boom up and down.
"The flexible options of the VarioTray entail cost benefits and save a huge amount of time for the otherwise tedious ballast installation and removal", claims Emil Egger's Michael Egger.
The LR11000 joins Emil Egger's fleet of 30 cranes and will primarily be used for infrastructure projects, with the possibility of it being used abroad for erecting wind turbines.
