News in brief

The world’s largest crane busy at work at the harbour

Since August 2019, the world’s largest mobile crane has been stationed at the port of Esbjerg. The 80-metre crane is a Liebherr 800 with a lifting capacity of no less than 308 tonnes, and its unique capabilities have generated major demand among the companies at the harbour.  

‟Getting this crane to Esbjerg has been wonderful, and already we’re using it almost to its full capacity, as we have some very heavy lifting here at the harbour. We were concerned that it would be a bit of a hassle working with the crane due to its size, but it’s surprisingly easy and flexible to deal with,” explains John Fritsen who is a team leader at the operations department of Port Esbjerg.

The crane has also provided the harbour with an even better infrastructure, as it makes it possible to take on jobs that would previously have passed us by and gone to, for example, Hamburg instead. In addition to its impressive lifting capacity, the crane has a great quality in the windy weather of West Jutland, as it can operate at wind speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

‟But safety come first, of course. It also depends on the wind direction and the size of the load,” says Fritsen.

Ørsted builds central warehouse at Port Esbjerg 

The disused DFDS terminal at Port Esbjerg is being recycled: Ørsted is building a new 3,000 m2 central warehouse which is slated for completion this summer. Ørsted already has a central warehouse in East Esbjerg, but there are two important reasons why the new central warehouse will be located at Port Esbjerg .

‟We need more space for our operations going forward, and Port Esbjerg was an obvious choice for us. There’s lots of room and we’ll be in an area where we’ll not need special transport permits to go through the city. In addition, there are excellent opportunities to extend in the future,” says Troels Klit Pedersen who is Head of Operations Supply Chain at Ørsted.

The central warehouse at Port Esbjerg will be CO2-neutral, as it will be fitted with solar panels, allowing Ørsted to produce its own electricity and heating. The facility will be used for main components for the wind turbine industry, such as gearboxes, generators and transformers. In addition to space, the port of Esbjerg also has the necessary quay facilities that Ørsted needs. The fact that many jack-up vessels are based at the port of Esbjerg will be an advantage to Ørsted, when the heavy components are to be shipped and installed.

‟We need the jack-up vessels to install the components, and many of them sail directly out of the port of Esbjerg. This means that we can load the goods directly onto the vessels from the central warehouse,” explains Pedersen. 

The new warehouse will have two indoor gantry cranes with lifting capacity of up to 40 tonnes each. Envipa Ejendomme has been tasked with building the new central warehouse for Ørsted.

The Seafarers’ Centre has moved to new premises at Dokvej

The Seafarers’ Centre at Port Esbjerg has moved to new and larger premises. The centre is a free service to seafarers from all over the world who come to visit Port Esbjerg. The new premises will make it even more comfortable for seafarers passing through.

At the reception on Monday 24 February, Centre Manager Jan Erik Kamstrup welcomed everybody to the 375-squaremetre Seafarers’ Centre at Dokvej. The Chairman of the Board Jesper Juul Larsen added his warm thanks to all the donors who have supported the centre financially over many years and to all the wonderful volunteers who run the centre day to day.

Esbjerg Harbour Services and Seafarers’ Centre was established in October 1964. The centre provides table tennis, billiards, fitness room, library, IT café, shower facilities and much more and it is run by volunteers aged 62–83. The centre is an oasis for seafarers who may enjoy reading newspapers from all over the world, challenging each other to a game of table tennis or taking a well-earned rest on their journey.