GGR’s compact and powerful pick and carry cranes have once again proved to be the perfect dockside lifting machines on the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier construction project.

A 15 tonne capacity Galizia G150 pick and carry crane has been helping to prepare semi-submersible Boa Barge 35 to carry completed sections of the aircraft carrier to be welded together at the final assembly point in Babcock’s Rosyth shipyard, Fife.

Recently the G150 crane has been working in Portsmouth, lifting and laying steel grillage blocks weighing 13 tonnes each onto the deck of the Boa Barge 35. BAE Systems have spent two years building this segment of the carrier which is fitted out with machine rooms and crew accommodation. These steel blocks acted as supports for holding the weight of the 6,000 tonne section on its journey to the opposite end of the UK.

Last summer the G150 crane completed this same task for loading the first section of the aircraft carrier onto the AMT Trader barge at Govan shipyard. The precision controls, lifting power and high manoeuvrability of this crane make it the perfect machine for working on these busy dockside sites.

To place the 70 metre long by 40 metre wide load onto the barge and its supports in the Portsmouth shipyard, the Boa 35 was submerged under the water and the carrier was ‘skated’ onto the deck. Once the barge had reached Rosyth, the G150 was used again to clear the deck by removing these steel supports once the carrier section had been unloaded.