mattjoneswrites

Originally printed in the Fall 2014 issue of Hatchery International.

Cooke Aquaculture announced on July 17 it would be investing €6.5 million in the Aquicultura Balear hatchery in Palma de Malloca, Spain. Cooke, who hosted the event through their Spanish subsidiary Culmarex, hope that the investment will make Aquicultura Balear the largest hatchery for sea bass and sea bream in Spain and one of the biggest in the Mediterranean Sea with an annual capacity of more than 45 million juvenile sea bream and sea bass.

Cooke Aquaculture CEO Glenn Cooke was thrilled to announce the investment, saying “I am prepared to invest and to make these expansions happen. I understand the potential for employment and economic activity that our investments can generate. I am committed to working with you to realize this potential.”

Cooke noted that the Canadian Government recently signed a free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), which he sees as a very positive initiative. “We look forward to growing our global business because of it. I am also pleased that the EU is encouraging its members to grow their aquaculture sectors.”

The hatchery itself features a genetics program where land based broodstock are raised in a disease-free environment, making it ideal from a fish health management perspective. The hatchery is operated by an experienced team of managers and technicians, given support though Cooke Aquaculture’s global team.

“Now that we have Culmarex facilities and investments on Mallorca, we recognize this important activity and want to see it expand,” said Margaret Mercadal, General Manager of Agriculture and Fisheries in Isles Baleares. Mercadal notes that support for aquaculture expansion has been very encouraging, not only from Spain, but from the EU as a whole.

“Now that we are raising 40 million juveniles on Mallorca, let us hope for 40 million more in the future!” said Mercadal.

Maximo Hurtado, Trade Commissioner for Canada in Spain noted that with Spain’s emergence from the recent economic crisis and the implementation of the trade agreement, investment and trade between the two countries should continue to grow in the future.

“Innovation is key and Cooke is a good example,” said Hurtado. “We are very proud of Cooke.”

Originally printed in the Winter 2014 issue of Crane & Hoist Canada.

In the crane business, every job presents its own unique challenges which must be addressed with ingenuity and creativity. But when the Maid of the Mist – a tour boat service and a Niagara Falls institution – needed a boat storage and maintenance facility, Project Manager Vinny Jowdy and the rest of his crew from LPCiminelli found themselves in a job site which presented nothing but unique challenges every step of the way. And Jowdy wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve been in the business 25 years,” says Jowdy. “I’ve had a great opportunity to do a lot of crazy and interesting stuff, but this was really neat.”

The Schoellkopf Power Station, which had collapsed in 1956, was determined to be an ideal site for the facility, just downstream from the Maid of the Mist’s boarding facility. But now Jowdy and crew had to tackle the logistics.

“The site is roughly 200 feet down into the gorge,” says Jowdy. “So mobilizing was quite a task. We operated out of the Discovery Center parking lot, which is a small museum at the edge of the gorge.”

After hiring contractors to scale the face of the gorge and addressing other safety concerns, the next step was the setup of a AAA ringer crane from Manitowoc. In the configuration it was rented, Jowdy says, the crane ended up with a capacity of 290,000 lbs., with a 170 foot radius and near a million lbs. of counterweights. Setting up the crane took roughly two weeks, involving 90 piles driven 40 feet into the bedrock, two layers of crane mat and two feet of crushed stone.

“In the interim, we brought in a 400 ton hydraulic crane. That crane is how we got up and down while we were building the service crane. It’s how we lowered down some very small equipment – even though it’s a 400 ton hydraulic, by the time you reach over the edge of the gorge and down you have very little capacity. So we brought down some little excavators. We’d put five or six people in the basket and they’d be up and down.”

If the wind picked up too much, however, the crew would have to find other ways out of the gorge. First, there was the option of a 40 minute hike up a small path. Another option was to have the Maid of the Mist’s utility boats pick up workers and bring them to the tourist boarding site.  From that site, an elevator could take them back up to the top of the gorge and where they’d be transported back to the site via pick-up trucks.

“It was a little bit like that movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles some days,” laughs Jowdy.

Once the service crane was in operation, it became the primary method of transporting workers and materials. The crew performed much of the site preparation and excavation, as well as much of the iron work and all of the concrete.

One of the final steps was the renovation of the power plant’s decommissioned elevator system. After clearing roughly 12 tonnes of debris from the shafts, the crew were able to install a new single car elevator which will be the primary method of bringing supplies down to the maintenance facility. For Jowdy himself, this was a great, cathartic moment.

“Push the button and it goes about 350 feet per minute, so in 40 seconds you’re in the lower gorge,” says Jowdy. “After riding in a crane and hiking out or riding a boat that was a nice feeling. It’s very rewarding.”

SIDEBAR – Maid of the Mist’s marine crane

The storage and maintenance facility was not the only project LPCiminelli were tasked with for the Maid of the Mist. A new crane capable of lifting the boats of out of the water was needed as well.

“The marine crane is from Liebherr,” says Jowdy. “This thing came into town from the port in Hamilton, Ontario. It was a big media event. This thing is huge and it was coming down the streets.”

The 85-foot tall, 197-ton capacity marine crane could be lowered into the gorge fairly easily by the AAA Manitowoc, but it then needed to be moved into position 300 feet away.

The crane is mounted on a concrete base with a series of micro piles that go down roughly 75 feet to find competent rock. LPCiminelli hired Clark’s Rigging and Rentals to handle the erection of the crane and they worked alongside two of Liebherr’s own engineers, who came all the way from Austria. Working together, they erected the crane in short order.

The new crane first placed the boats in the water back in May and removed the boats for the season on October 31.