To Tüpras

Within the framework of the Tüpras Project, COORDINADORA carried out the transport of a 918 t cracking reactor of 34.89 x 7.95 x 8.55 m from Muroran (Japan) to the Tüpras Refinery in Izmit (Turkey) and it was the heaviest item ever handled. Due to its outstanding weight, the port of destination had to be checked to ensure that the terminal was strong enough to bear such a load on it. The unit was loaded in Japan together with other 7 large reactors with weights ranging from 500 to 700 t.

Since the road transportation from the port of Derience to the jobsite was absolutely unfeasible, a local flat pontoon was chartered to bridge the gap through a Ro/Ro operation. The destination quay was damaged by the famous earthquake that happened in Turkey some years ago and so it had to be reinforced in accordance with COORDINADORA´s calculations. Additionally, due to the same reasons, it was not possible to touch the first 5 meters from the quay edge, so our own Engineering Department designed and built a special Ro/Ro steel ramp of 12 m length and more than 1.000 t bearing capacity.

The cargo was loaded directly from vessel onto a 20 doubles axles SPMT platform. Then, this vehicle was loaded on the barge and the cargo was properly lashed. All the complicated ballasting procedure was calculated and managed on site by COORDINADORA. Given that the cargo had to be stored onto stools and the saddles provided by vendor were not wide enough for that purpose, special transportation beams were also designed by our own engineers.

As a final anecdote, due to the local relevance of this operation, a ram was sacrificed by the refinery owner in a religious ceremony.