Windmill towers to the Great Lakes

Early in 2019 BigLift concluded a contract with GE for multiple shipments of Windmill Towers going from Port Bécancour, Quebec, to various destinations in the Great Lakes, mainly to Duluth, Minnesota and Erie, Pennsylvania.

The shipments began in April 2019 and will continue until October/November requiring some 11 – 13 voyages.

These Windmill Towers come in various sizes and are broken down into several sections per full tower, as otherwise they are too large to be transported on land to their final destinations. Each shipment takes about 5 – 6 days transit time.

The overall volume to be shipped is about 450 individual sections, translating to more or less 150 complete towers, with weights ranging from 40 tons to 65 tons each section and dimensions between 23 and 32 meters long, giving a total in excess of 200,000 cubic meters.

As the Great Lakes are a special Trading Area which has a number of restrictions, such as the beam of the ship and its maximum draft, BigLift chose the M/V Happy River as the performing vessel for this contract as she meets all the necessary Great Lakes requirements. Another factor is that her cargo hold and deck area are such that an optimum tower intake can be achieved, resulting in very economical transportation charges for our client.