The third ship-to-shore Panamax crane installed by TCL on the South Terminal is already in full operation.
The new crane, ordered to Eurocrane, represents an important reinforcement of the operational capacity of TCL in the quay front, enabling, for instance, to handle simultaneously two twenty-feet full containers, regardless of their weight.
With the new ship-to-shore crane, the productivity of the ships operation at TCL increases meaningfully, now that it is possible to operate a ship with two Panamax cranes simultaneously.
The investment in the new ship-to-shore crane, as well as a new crane on yard, also ordered to Eurocrane and in operation since March, not forgetting the technological improvement of several gear, amounted up to about 9.5 million euros, co-financed by communitarian funds, in the scope of the Operational Program Factors of Competitiveness of the Incentive System to Innovation of QREN.
The installation of the Panamax cranes is in line with the investments done by APDL on the improvement of the maritime accessibilities to Leixões, which made possible the scale of ships with greater dimensions.
With this more investment, TCL applied already more than 50 million euros in the concession of the Leixões Container Terminal since mid-2000, exceeding what it was obliged to, contractually.