Cooper Consolidated, E-Crane Host Christening For Creole King
E-Crane hosted a christening ceremony July 11 with Lower Mississippi River-based stevedore Cooper Consolidated at the Port of Iberia for the Creole King, a barge-mounted stevedoring crane.
E-Crane is a Belgium-based builder of electric, counterbalanced cranes with subsidiaries in the Netherlands and the United States.
Corn Island Shipyard in Grandview, Ind., built the barge, which measures 200 feet by 72 feet with a depth of 12 feet. The crane atop the barge was assembled by E-Crane’s Gulf Coast Service team at its assembly and service facility in New Iberia, La., at the Port of Iberia. E-Crane opened its facility at the Port of Iberia in late 2023.
Standing 75 feet tall with a reach of 125 feet, the Creole King is powered by E-Crane’s EC30382 PD-E crane, built on the company’s 4000C series platform, which is capable of lifting up to 52 tons. The crane is equipped with interchangeable clamshells from J&B Grabs that have capacities of 47 and 39 cubic yards. The Creole King is the second of two crane barges Cooper Consolidated ordered from E-Crane, with the Pelican coming online last December. E-Crane’s service center in south Louisiana, along with the efficiency and reliability of its diesel electric system, played a huge role in Cooper Consolidated ordering the two cranes, said Scott Becnel, director of business development for Cooper Consolidated.Cooper Consolidated is a joint venture formed in 2003 between Cooper Stevedoring and Consolidated Grain & Barge (CGB).
“We studied the market for bulk material-handling equipment that offered a combination of performance, ease of maintenance and operation and energy efficiency, and E-Crane checked all the boxes,” Becnel said.
Lance Rase, senior vice president of the terminal, marine and transportation divisions of CGB Enterprises, marine and transportation divisions, said E-Crane’s presence in south Louisiana was huge.
“I love the great state of Ohio,” Rase said, referencing E-Crane’s U.S. headquarters in Galion, Ohio, “but Ohio’s a long way from Louisiana. As we continued conversations, when E-Crane decided to work with the Port of Iberia on a Gulf Coast staging connection, and they decided they were going to plant their flag down here to be where the machines are and to service us appropriately so that we can deliver for our customers in state, that mattered. We appreciate that beyond belief.”
The Port of Iberia, through Louisiana’s Port Priority Program, invested more than $6 million to make E-Crane’s location at the port a reality, refurbishing infrastructure and upgrading facilities to accommodate the facility.
“We started with 12 new jobs,” Port of Iberia Executive Director Craig Romero said. “We expect that to grow to 50 as more cranes are built. This is an example of smart investment yielding long-term dividends.”
E-Crane USA CEO Steve Os- borne emphasized just how efficient the Creole King’s electric powertrain really is, reducing fuel usage by up to 80 percent compared to convention- al cranes.
“It takes about the amount of diesel in a wineglass to move a ton of cargo,” Osborne said. “The result is a dramatically lower environmental footprint that benefits us all.”
The Creole King features a 1,500 kw. main generator from Cummins and a Cummins 150 kw. deck generator. The crane offers a maximum duty cycle capacity of 51.7 tons and a maximum lift capacity of 63.9 tons. The Creole King’s crane can rotate a full 360 degrees and has an operating weight of 580 tons. Speaking at the christening, Rase said one type of commodity the Creole King and Pelican are designed to handle are dried distillers grains (DDGs), a byproduct of using corn to make ethanol.
Cooper Consolidated’s cranes are based in Darrow, La. Both the Creole King and the Pelican are designed to service ships up to Panamax size and can operate in tandem with the company’s barge-mounted grain conveying system, the LMO. The LMO enables exporters to weight, grade and sample commodities directly in midstream.
Rase concluded the christening by breaking a bottle of champagne over the Creole King’s clamshell, painted in Cooper Consolidated’s green and yellow color scheme. After the christening, a crane operator demonstrated the crane’s capabilities by grabbing water and sediment from the water adjacent to the barge.
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Featured Caption: Lance Rase, senior vice president for the terminal, marine and transportation divisions of CGB Enterprises, christens the crane barge Creole King in New Iberia, La., July 11. (Photos by Frank McCormack)
