UK-based heavy transport specialist Collett & Sons deployed a 250-tonne girder bridge trailer and SPMT to transport a 146-tonne Yankee dryer a new facility in Deeside, UK.
Working on behalf of HLI Rail & Rigging, Collett’s work started at Ellesmere Port where the Yankee dryer was discharged from a vessel using a Liebherr LTM1800D crane and loaded directly onto Collett’s 16-axle girder bridge trailer. The Yankee dryer, which measured 8.97 m x 5.62 m x 5.72 m, was delivered to the new Industrie Cartarie Tronchetti (ICT) paper manufacturing plant at Northern Gateway in Deeside, where the dryer will produce tissue paper.
Collett’s early-stage works included route planning, surveys and Swept Path Analysis reports. Given the loaded trailer’s height of 6.2 m, re-routing and revising permits of the original route were necessary. Traffic was managed alongside relevant stakeholders and authorities, such as local councils and local police, and temporary removal or relocation of street furniture to negotiate corners, roundabouts and splitter islands was carried out by Collett.
Following night-time transport, the Yankee dryer arrived at the facility and was transhipped onto a 6-axle SPMT by driving the vehicle underneath it, allowing for self-loading. The girder bridge was then demobilised. Then, the dryer was carefully moved on-site and lowered onto stools for installation using a hydraulic gantry system, with the SPMT safely driven out once the load was in place.
“This was a really exciting project for us,” said Ali Abdallah, commercial manager at Collett & Sons. “Moving a 6.2 m-high convoy along tricky routes with height restrictions, motorway closures and tight corners meant the team had to plan everything down to the last detail.”
The project took 15 months from conceptualisation to realisation, with final delivery taking place in June 2025.
HLPFI reported last week that Collett had opened a warehouse in partnership with Wilson Power Solutions.
