KARACHI, Oct 8: A special project ship — Zhenhua 5 — carrying two ship-to- shore gantry cranes and eight rubber tire gantries (RTGs) worth $25 million was given a berth at the Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT) on Wednesday.

The ship belonging to manufacturer of cranes, ZPMC of China, is a special project vessel, which only carries gantry cranes. Each gantry crane costs around $6 million and RTG $1.25 million.

The arrival of gantries with a heavy cost at a time, when the economy is under tremendous pressure and investment climate is bleak, is being taken as a good omen by shipping circles.

The freight of carrying gantry crane is very high as it constitutes almost 13 per cent or about $0.8 million of its cost. Each gantry crane weighs around 1,200 tons and no ordinary vessel can carry this load.

Presently, China is the largest manufacturer of gantry cranes and ZPMC alone is having 250 such cranes on its production line. Due to uncompetitive price most of the European manufacturers have closed down their units. These include Germany’s biggest company, Noell, as they could not compete with Chinese cranes, ports and shipping experts said.

Captain Anwar Shah, former director general Ports and Shipping told Dawn that on arrival of these cranes the PICT’s handling capacity of containers will increase from 0.5 million Teus to 0.8 million boxes per annum.

He further said that arrival of these cranes will help revive investors’ confidence as it indicates that the country has the potential to grow on its external trade.

Mr Shah said that the unloading process of these cranes, which are taller than 10-storey building, is a unique experience and it is going to take place on Thursday.