KONECRANES recently completed a major refurbishment of a 16.8T Digester jib at Mondi in Richards Bay well ahead of schedule.
The entire job, removal, design, reverse engineer, paint, re-assemble, install, wiring and final commissioning took 52 working days from date of project start to completion.
In October last year the Richards Bay team undertook the challenging removal of the crane. The jib sat 80m high on top of the digester and a 440T mobile crane with luffing booms was used to remove it, together with another 220Ton mobile crane. The removal took about seven days due to weather problems, including strong winds.
Because of the serious structural damage the jib was condemned by the Konecranes service team on site.
“The whole project ran smoothly despite the often adverse weather conditions”, said John MacDonald, Service Director at Konecranes. “We have an excellent crew, led by Ferdi Pieterse, which made this possible. They put the Konecranes name on the top of the leader board by showing that we can handle any size job in Richards Bay.”
The digester jib was handed over on 30 January 2018, exactly a month ahead of schedule.