A Liebherr LHM-420 mobile harbour crane is now operational at the Port of Guanta

Until now, almost every operation at Guanta was planned around the gear the vessel brought with her. That is a constraint shipowners know well: gearless tonnage either skipped the port or arrived with a chartered solution, and heavy pieces were engineered around ship cranes, tandem lifts and rigging configurations. A shore crane rated at 124 metric tons removes that constraint for a large share of the cargo that moves through eastern Venezuela.

The practical reading for a charterer or an operations desk: gearless vessels become viable at Guanta, discharge rates on containerized cargo improve at roughly 20 moves per hour, and project pieces that previously required a tandem lift with two ship cranes can now be handled in a single pick, provided the weight and the geometry fall within the 124 ton and 48 meter envelope. For pieces above that, the existing approach still applies and T&T continues to engineer those lifts around ship’s gear.

Official hire rates

Shore crane hire is charged under the tariff regime published in Gaceta Oficial N° 41.227 of 1 September 2017. Two rates apply, both subject to a mandatory minimum hire period of four consecutive hours:

General cargo and breakbulk: USD 1,500.00 per hour.
Containerized cargo: USD 1,200.00 per hour.

The full tariff resolution is available for download in the documents section of this site, together with the circular that establishes the Revenue Ton calculation basis applied across Bolipuertos ports.

How the crane is requisitioned

The Guanta Division of Operations of Bolipuertos requires a formal procedure to guarantee equipment allocation and berth scheduling. Three conditions matter, and missing any one of them puts the allocation at risk:

Seven days of notice. The formal crane requisition must be filed at least seven calendar days before the vessel’s ETA.

Filing through the appointed agency. The request is processed and signed by the attending shipping agency on the standard port machinery assignment form addressed to the Port Operations Division. It cannot be filed informally.

A complete cargo technical dossier. Alongside the request, the port requires the stowage and discharge plan with hatch locations and discharge sequence, verified cargo particulars with exact dimensions and gross weight per piece plus the indicated center of gravity for heavy lift units, and a photographic survey showing lifting points, certified pad eyes, trunnions and slinging provisions so the rigging configuration can be verified before the lift.

That last item is where most delays originate. A requisition filed without usable photographs of the lifting points, or with weights that do not match the manifest, gets held while the information is chased, and by then the berth window has moved. T&T prepares that dossier as part of the operational planning of every call, which is the same discipline we apply to the lift plan itself.

If you have a vessel calling Guanta and want to know whether the shore crane fits your cargo, write to info@ttstevedoring.com with your cargo list, piece weights and ETA, and we will come back with the handling approach and a pre-arrival cost estimate.