This sparkling Swarovski Christmas Tree was the festive centrepiece of Berlin railway station and was put together with some help from a UNIC mini spider crane.

A 6 tonne capacity UNIC URW-706 model was chosen to build the glittering Christmas tree, or Weihnachtsbaum, piece by piece inside the station’s glazed concourse. The 20 metre tall tree was covered in 40,000 Swarovski Aurora Borealis crystals, making it the most expensive tree in the country with the decorations worth a massive €2.5 million.

The mini crane was used by bt-sky-lift Zeilinga GmbH to install the tree. The URW-706 crane was sold to them by our official UNIC mini crane dealer in Germany,Mini & Mobile Cranes Körner GmbH. The crane was used to stack sections of the tree on top of each other, with personnel working from an access platform fixing them into place and covering any gaps with extra foliage.

The UNIC URW-706 model has a chassis measuring just 1.67 metres wide so it could easily reach the lifting location inside Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main railway station. With a maximum lifting height of 22.7 metres when fitted with a fly jib, this crane model was chosen for this job as it had the reach required to lift the top sections of the tree into place.

UNIC mini cranes have also been used for other festive lifting tasks over the holiday season, for example creating a Christmas tree structure for a London cafe and building a Santa’s Grotto at a major shopping centre.  Take a look at UNIC mini cranes lifting and planting other types of trees all year round in our Landscaping gallery.

For assistance choosing a compact crane for your installation work, speak to a member of our customer services team at your closest GGR depot. To find out more about where to find UNIC mini cranes outside of the UK, please visit our UNIC Cranes Europe website.