Los Angeles Readies Tallest Port Crane

The first of 10 ship-to-shore cranes at the APM Terminals Los Angeles Pier 400 facility was raised 33 feet (10 meters), making it the tallest port crane in North America.

It will be ready for vessel operations in the next few months and designed to prepare for regular ultra-large container vessel calls in the trans-Pacific trade lanes, carrying up to 20,000 TEUs. The largest ships that could be served prior to the upgrade were vessels carrying an average of 13,000 TEUs.

An additional feature of the upgraded cranes is the installation of Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting which will improve operator visibility and accuracy of the cranes’ optical character recognition programs. The cranes will use 60 percent less energy than conventional lighting systems.

APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles operates a total of 14 ship-to-shore cranes. The ten retro-fitted cranes will enable handling vessels that have a beam of 23-containers wide, and stacked ten containers high above deck.

The project represents an investment of $40 million.
 
At 484 acres, APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles, which opened in 2002, is the largest single proprietary terminal in the world, featuring an ondock railyard that keeps thousands of trucks off nearby roads while reducing diesel emissions.

The Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex is the busiest in North America, with a combined throughput of 15.3 million TEUs in 2015. Throughput at APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles was 2.48 million TEUs in 2015.