The Port Authority of the Cayman Islands is set to receive a long overdue new harbour crane in December, which should help the efficiency of cargo operations and reduce vulnerability.
“One of the port cranes is 43 years old and it has reached the end of its useful life,” said Port Authority Director Paul Hurlston. “It was completely unusable for about six months of this year, and meanwhile the other crane also went down a few times as well.”
Cranes are essential to the port operations.
“Without an operating crane at the port, we would have almost no imports coming into the Cayman Islands; it would quickly result in a critical situation,” Hurlston said.
Port Authority board Chairman Cline Glidden Jr. praised the port staff for keeping the flow of imports going under difficult conditions.
“When one of the cranes broke down recently, the port workers were working day and night to get the imports off the ships,” he said. “The port workers have done an incredible job despite the difficult circumstances.”
Inefficient and ageing cranes
The need for a new crane to lift containers from the ships has been known for years.
“Both of the cranes on the dock are over 30 years old,” Glidden said.
Making matters more difficult, the cranes at the dock are modified construction cranes, not a modern purpose-built harbour crane like the one on order.
“Right now, if a ship comes in bow first, when we lift containers from the starboard side of the ship, the crane sometimes becomes unstable,” Glidden said. “It actually lifts the back of the crane up off the ground.”
Recently, it was determined that the boom of one of the cranes was corroded, and because of the age of both cranes, it is becoming increasingly hard to find parts,
“We had to get some of the parts made because they just weren’t available anymore,” said Hurlston.
The issue of ageing equipment is not confined to just Grand Cayman; the crane in Cayman Brac is also 48 years old and one of the two gantry cranes at the cargo distribution centre has been breaking down repeatedly this year.
“We have been trying to keep it going,” Hurlston said.
The new crane will be a welcome addition to the port operations when it arrives in December.
‘We purchased a Gottwald harbour crane and it will be shipped to the Cayman Islands from the port of Antwerp in Belgium,” Hurlston said.
Gottwald mobile harbour cranes are used in several other ports in the Caribbean including Jamaica and the Bahamas.
Cargo port development
The need for a new or expanded cargo port was highlighted by a strategic outline business case prepared by consultancy firm Stantec in 2024.
The strategic outline business case listed options for a new cargo port in Red Bay/South Sound, North Sound, East End, Frank Sound and the quarries in Breakers. Because of the size of the needed expansion of the current cargo port in George Town, the consultancy firm didn’t view that as a viable option in its strategic outline business case. It stated that any new port facility would take 10 to 15 years to complete, so upgrading the current facility was seen as an urgent need.
Glidden said the new crane was part of the needed upgrade and he explained why it has taken until now to order it.
“The decision to make the significant investment in a new crane was delayed until a policy decision was made on the [cruise] port development, because that would impact the type of crane which would be most efficient and effective,” he said. “We look forward to providing a safer working environment for the staff and better service to our clients with the new crane.”
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The fact that both existing cranes were modified construction cranes, one 43 years old and the other over 30 years old, speaks volumes. Most of our imports arrive by ship and their efficient offloading is vital to our economy.How could this situation arise?.