Demand drives Brake port extension

It cost about €3.2m and is designed to cope with burgeoning steel product handling, much of it offshore components. The new site is directly linked to the adjacent Niedersachsenkai, directly on the Weser. Designed for heavy duty handling it is reinforced to carry 1,000 tonnes.

Juergen Huntgeburth, managing director of J. Mueller Breakbulk, which is investing in the warehouse site, said it had originally been planned to put the new hall into operation in early 2014, but that because steel products handling had risen so rapidly in Brake, it had been decided to build earlier.

Rising handling volumes, a shortage of storage space and the increasing size of product components had triggered the decision to build the hall now. “What we had here was a storage area of 100,000m2 but no warehouse”, he said.

Another reason for the hall is that ship cargo is increasingly made up of different kinds of steel products, some of which need to be stored indoors and protected from the weather. The hall also serves to simplify quayside logistics and ship movement as well as protect the environment, the J.Mueller company said.

The impressive new warehouse will boast 8,000 m2 of space in two equal halves and is 80m wide and 100m long with 13.2m wide and 8m high doors at both ends. It will be used for a wide range of items but will mainly store steel products and project loads, usually steel coils but also girders up to 12m. In charge of construction has been local firm Schäfer Consult while the hall was built after tender by Brünninghof in Westphalia.

The Halle Nord site is the latest step in the northern extension of the Port of Brake. Niedersachsenkai expansion was completed last year with the addition of a second berth for ocean going ships, bringing quay length to 450m. That was because the growing handling of steel products and offshore wind energy components was becoming increasingly difficult in the old port, where storage was limited and ship manoeuvrability restricted.

Increased demand for project cargo handling at the Niedersachsenkai is now being met by two Liebherr mobile cranes. An LHM 550 recently joined sister LHM 500, which has been in service since 2009. The two can be electronically synchronised to lift a combined 280 tonnes in tandem

In an interview Mueller chairman Jan Mueller called on the Lower Saxony government to help in efforts costing €10m up to 2015 to renovate an existing berth and create a second at the port’s Agricultural Products Terminal. He also urged water deepening at the Niedersachsenkai to cope with ever bigger ships and more land reclamation.

By Tom Todd