The winners of the 2023 ESTA Awards of Excellence have been revealed at a ceremony at the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
The winner of the cranes, telescopic lifting capacity less than 120 tonnes category was Türkiye’s Hareket for its work on a funicular line in Istanbul where it took on tandem lift operations to install a set of 22 m-long wagons underground. Other finalists in this category included Aertssen Group, Schot Verticaal Transport and Wagenborg Nedlift.
For the cranes, telescopic lifting capacity more than 120 tonnes award, BMS took home the trophy – beating Friderici Spécial, Kranen Michielsens and Wagenborg Nedlift – for the positioning of a 95-tonne steel bridge, during which the crane set-up changed from a single-lift to a tandem-lift while the lifting operation was in progress.
Mammoet and Sarens were both shortlisted for the cranes, lattice boom category but it was Mammoet that scooped the win for its handling of a 430-tonne filter unit at a confined plant. The heavy lift specialist called on its 3D precision planning software to help with the lift, which was executed with its PTC35-DS crane.
For the abnormal transport with a total mass of less than 120 tonnes category, Laso Transportes was crowned the winner for the transport of wind turbine blades, measuring up to 82 m, through small villages and narrow curved roads in Portugal. The other finalists in that category included Collett & Sons, MJ van Riel and Senn.
MTD Kasimierz Skuratowicz took home the trophy for abnormal transport with a total mass over 120 tonnes for its transport of a tunnel boring machine from Opole to Babica. A 750 km route via Warsaw saw a transport combination of 74 m, with a total weight of 500 tonnes. The finalists included Allelys, Bolk Transport and Silvasti.
Friderici Spécial won the combined techniques award, beating Mammoet, Sarens and Wagenborg Nedlift for its project transporting a 74-tonne transformer from Regensburg, Germany, to Zürich, Switzerland.
The safety award went to Fagioli for a seafastening system that was developed for the transport of two ship-to-shore cranes from Malta to Marseille.
Fagioli also took home the innovation award for a movable strand jack solution that was developed to lift a series of concrete viaducts weighing 1,400 tonnes each. Finalists in this category included Aertssen Group, Faymonville and Liebherr.
The SPMT award went to Mammoet. Several world records were broken for its project that saw 748 axle lines of SPMTs and 30 power packs deployed to move the 20,300-tonne FPSO vessel Curlew into a decommissioning and recycling facility in Norway. The finalists in this category included Hareket and Wagenborg.
Lastly, the training award went to Liebherr Mobile and Crawler Cranes-Werk Ehingen. Liebherr beat tough competition in Sarens to take home this award for its standard of training crane operators, dispatchers and workshop staff. The extensive programme involves e-learning modules, live-stream sessions and face-to-face training courses, which have a strong focus on improving safety in the industry.
