Floating along

The German Algeco GmbH belongs to the Modulaire Group, an international leading provider of modular room solutions. Algeco produces innovative container solutions for children’s daycare, schools, offices, residential homes and building sites. The portfolio ranges from functional buildings for a limited period of use to high-quality modular buildings as an interesting alternative to conventional building methods. 

Algeco has 15 service centres in Germany, of which 14 use fork-lifts with individually adapted container spreaders from KAUP to transport the different modules. But Karlstein is different. Because this is the only location that does not rely on fork-lifts. Here, a white gantry crane from Teichmann Krane moves above the warehouse area, which has space for 550 living and office containers as well as storage positions for 15 stairways.

But the gantry crane would be useless without a suitable machine to move the containers. In this case it is a dahlia yellow 7T191K10-20/8-9 container spreader from KAUP. Behind that rather cumbersome code hides a spreader with a twin frame design, that can be telescoped continuously from 2,990 to 6,190 mm. This enables picking up of the empty living and office modules of varying sizes from above as well as the respective stairways. But the special feature of this spreader is not the colour, but the load pick-up method.

While ISO containers are normally secured with so-called Twistlocks, KAUP designed the securing method at Algeco somewhat differently. Because at each corner of the spreader there is a pick-up hook that enters the side openings of the corner castings to secure the containers for transport. That is a method that is used already at other Algeco locations and is necessary due to the closely spaced living and office containers.

To make picking up of the modules even more secure, sensitive proximity switches are installed on all four pick-up hooks along with the querying mechanism and two visual displays. In particular, the traffic-light displays visible from all positions make placing the spreader easier. Because red appears when all four hooks are open. The traffic light shows amber when the spreader is in position on the module: only when all hooks are closed does the traffic light turn to green so that the gantry crane can lift one of the living and office containers.