Sarens to Transport New Lock Doors for Panama Canal

The Belgian heavy lift and special transport group Sarens will transport and install the 16 new lock doors of the Panama Canal.

Land transports will be carried out with SPMT’s (Self-Propelled Modular Trailers), for inland water transport Sarens will use their own barges. Sea transport will be carried out by Italian Geodis Wilson using STX vessels.

The new Panama lock doors have been designed in the Netherlands and are being produced by the Italian steel manufacturer CIMOLAI. As of February 2013 Sarens will undertake to transport the doors from the Italian factory in San Giorgio di Nogaro to Trieste along the Aussa-Corno canal.

This transport will consist out of four transports of four doors each, moved with SPMT’s on a barge. The doors weigh between 1.900 and 4.300t and measure 58,7m x 10,0m x 34,7m. In Trieste Sarens will load the gates onto a STX sea-going vessel. This execution will take about 15 days per transport.

The vessel will sail to Panama in about 21 days. At the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal eight lock doors will be unloaded with SPMT’s and stored. The other eight lock doors will be unloaded and reloaded onto a barge and brought one by one to the Pacific side of the Canal through the existing Panama locks.

At the Pacific side Sarens will do the load-in with SPMT’s to the storage area. The last gates will arrive in Panama during October 2013.

The locks are part of a new lock complex that is being built in a separate bypass next to the existing locks.

The new system will result in an increased lockage capacity and a shorter maintenance time. The locks will be able to receive vessels up to 13,000 TEU’s, instead of 5,000 TEU’s (twenty feet containers) for the old locks. The renovation and enlargement of the Panama Canal should be finished in 2014, in time for the Canal’s 100th birthday.

About Sarens

The Sarens Group, with its head office in Wolvertem, is an international company of Belgian origin, specialized in crane rental and engineering projects involving lifting and moving loads with exceptional sizes and weights. The family-owned business, currently active in over 50 countries, employs some 3.600 staff worldwide, with a consolidated turnover of € 480 million.

This “specialist of the extra-ordinary” brings its broad gamut of cranes and other equipment worldwide into action within different industries. Sarens’ main customers are companies active in oil & gas production, energy, petrochemicals, major civil projects and mining. A specialized wind division focuses on setting up wind turbines, both onshore and offshore.