The speed and subsequent depth witnessed in the current economic slowdown has clearly presented the port industry with a wholly different range of decisions to ponder whilst formulating Capital expenditure budgets for 2010, and perhaps beyond.
There has, as a result, been a marked shift from the purchase of new capital-intensive items such as cranes to meet growing volumes and replace aging equipment, by projects more akin with conserving cash. This predicament has opened peoples’ eyes and minds to seriously consider schemes to extract another 5-10 years of use from Ship-to-Shore cranes that in more prosperous times would have been parked at the end of the quay, or even demolished.
Upgrade projects
WCS has, as a result, undertaken several upgrade projects recently conceived from the premise of extending the useful lifetime of major assets in business units spread around the globe. There is generally a common theme in the realization of such projects, which unfolds in the following pattern…
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