Slow boat to Sohar delivers giant unloader

A DELICATE and spectacular two-day operation of transferring a 30-metre high, 500-tonne ship unloader from a special barge to dry land has been successfully completed at Sohar Aluminium’s quay at the Port of Sohar.

The ship unloader, which has an unloading capacity of 800 tonnes per hour, will transfer raw materials such as alumina and petroleum coke (the major raw materials needed to make aluminium) from vessels used to import them to the Port of Sohar. The materials will then be conveyed to the specially-built coke and alumina silos at the port terminal by means of belt conveyors and air slides.

Sohar Aluminium CEO Tony Kinsman said the transfer of the ship unloader from the barge to the Port took two days to complete due to the enormous weight of the equipment and very precise nature of the operation.

“Many people from the Sohar Industrial Port Company (SIPC), Bechtel and Sohar Aluminium were involved in this operation, which was extremely complex and is a very important milestone of the Sohar Aluminium project,” Mr Kinsman said.

The ship unloader, provided by Neuero, a German Company specialized in the design and fabrication of pneumatic ship unloaders, took nine months to pre-assemble at a quay in Jebel Ali, UAE. It was then barged on a special vessel to Sohar Port, with the assistance of two tug boats, over a period of 62 hours.

“It was not possible to assemble the ship unloader at Sohar Port because the quay still had to be built,” Mr Kinsman said. “Therefore, it was decided to transport it by sea, fully assembled, from its construction site to Sohar.

“The barge solution was chosen because we can forecast the weather over a period of time longer than the expected navigation time. This solution is also less expensive than a heavy-lift vessel which is used for sea transportation over longer distances.”

The barge, provided by Abnormal Load Engineering (ALE) Middle East, which specializes in heavy lift transportation, is fitted with ballast tanks to permanently align the level of the deck of the barge with the level of the adjacent quay, to allow for tidal changes during the transfer of the unloader from barge to quay.

The transfer was assisted by a flat bed, self-propelled modular trailer. For the purpose of this operation, a temporary support was added to the structure of the ship unloader.

Sohar Aluminium’s shareholders are Oman Oil Company, Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Authority, and Alcan. The company was established in September 2004 to construct and operate a single AP35 potline aluminium smelter with an associated power plant. The smelter is targeted to start its first production of hot metal in 2008.

Sohar Aluminium will produce 350,000 tones of aluminium per year, of which 60 per cent will be sold locally and 40 per cent will be exported.