SENNEBOGEN 875 E Hybrid with premium rail gantry solution – Port handling at Birsterminal AG in Basel, Switzerland

The Swiss company Birsterminal AG in Basel, Switzerland, managed by CEO Martin Ticks, is characterized by a highly diversified portfolio: the day-to-day variety of bulk and general cargo handling, timber storage, storage area rentals, container handling and construction material recycling directly on the 90,000 m² site not only makes the Swiss company crisis-proof, moreover it has grown from a coal storage company founded in 1938 to an integrated and internationally active logistics platform in the Basel Rhine port.

To master these vast logistical challenges with the appropriate equipment, the Swiss team recently invested in three SENNEBOGEN material handling machines: An extremely maneuverable SENNEBOGEN 835 E with 18 m equipment and a 231 kW diesel engine operates, depending on the task at hand, throughout the entire premises and excels above all when loading and unloading wagons thanks to its stable, liftable cab. The operator thus enjoys a perfect view of his loading area and positions material carefully and safely.

As the timber sector at Birsterminal has also been growing steadily, the second material handler, a mobile SENNEBOGEN 855 E Hybrid, was equipped with a quick coupler: Be it with a timber grab, clamshell or orange peel grab, the solution with the second mobile material handler also led to an increase in flexibility for Birsterminal.

The 875 E Hybrid electric material handler, which is unique in its kind in Switzerland to date, is built up on an impressive rail gantry with a 16 m track width and, thanks to its enormous 29 m equipment, can easily reach across the three tracks to the storage areas. With it, the company relies on more than 35 years of SENNEBOGEN’s experience in the field of electric drives. In combination with state-of-the-art recuperation technology, Birsterminal will save considerable amounts of energy in the future: Starting from machine size 855 E series, SENNEBOGEN is installing the Green Hybrid system for energy recovery as standard, which provides an additional hydraulic cylinder between the two lifting cylinders. The additional hydraulic cylinder is connected to an energy storage module at the rear of the machine, which consists of nitrogen and piston accumulators: This is where the downward movement of the boom compresses gas according to the so-called hydropneumatic principle, by enabling the hydraulic oil to flow back from the hybrid cylinder and generate oil pressure in the piston accumulator. Especially for vertical and particularly deep boom movements, as is typical in port handling operations, the compressibility of the gas is used to temporarily store large amounts of energy. During the next lifting task, this energy is available again to lift the boom with significantly reduced power requirements. What is special about this type of recuperation technology is the large system volume of the four piston accumulators at the rear, which enables an almost constant force transmission over the entire cylinder path. When correctly preloaded, the system can substitute around 50% of the power actually required, thus saving energy costs on a large scale – ideal for port applications.

At bauma 2019, the official machine handover ceremony took place between Birsterminal, sales and service partner Kuhn and SENNEBOGEN. Shortly afterwards, the assembly work on the new rail gantry started: "We made a big leap forward with the electric material handler: The machine was quickly available, is very economical to operate, always ready for use and handles far more material per hour than our previous crane solution: in the past, we could only achieve a throughput of 120 t per hour, today it is 450 t," explains Martin Ticks, CEO of Birsterminal AG in Switzerland, about the positive experience with the new machine since its commissioning.