About: Brian Mezger

In January we moved our 130 ton Grove crane from Mtwara to Tanga, Tanzania.

Due to the size and weight of the unit, as well as road restrictions, the crane was dismantled and loaded onto 3 separate vehicles with the main unit loaded onto the low bed and the boom, counter weight and tyres loaded on tri-axles. With Hale bridge’s 4.7 height restriction in Tanga, and there being no alternative bypass routes, we loaded the unit to match the bridge’s limit so as to safely transport the crane.

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This month our Mozambican entity commenced the transportation of 31 loads of heavy construction equipment, containers and equipment accessories from Nacala to Afungi-Palma.

Alistair Mozambique worked together with the National Road Authority to acquire all permits and licences needed to perform this move in order to fully comply with road, bridge and other relative restrictions along the route so as to successfully achieve zero incidents on the operation.

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The last week of December saw our Mozambique equipment rental and material handling team participate in the assembly of the SMP rig at the P-25 site in Pande.  For this successful operation we used our 80T Grove rough terrain crane under the highest health, safety, environment and quality standards.  Many thanks to our client for continuously trusting in our services and our Mozambique team for the excellent execution of the work required.

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In December we transported 52 truckloads of steel pipes from Dar es Salaam port to Kitwe, Zambia.

This operation presented several interesting challenges. As per our in-house standards, we ensure that each truck is serviced after every trip. Due to the quantities required for this project and the schedule, our workshop team was required to work efficiently in order to turn around all the required trucks within 72 hrs of arrival in Dar.

As the pipes were of different sizes and weight, they had to be loaded onto the trucks and secured with special lashing equipment under the guidance of professional loading supervisors and plans. When six trucks were found to be overweight on GVM, our operations team quickly came up with a solution.

Due to the concerted efforts of our drivers, workshop, loading and lashing and operations teams as well as the client’s clearance team, the cargo moved without delays and was safely delivered without any incidents or accidents.

This past month Alistair provided logistical and personnel services for a reconnaissance trip for the geotechnical study for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.

The purpose of a geotechnical study is to study the suitability of the location of the pipeline route and the above ground installations and provide data necessary for the construction and engineering teams.

For this initial phase, we provided two (2) 4WD double cabin pickup trucks and utilised our professional network to enlist community liaison, security and medical experts for the job.

This month has seen us step up our support for the two Power Plant projects in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, providing a 60 ton crane for Kinyerezi 1 maintenance work and providing an extra 60 ton crane, a 4 ton Telehandler and 8 extra skilled riggers on top of our 250 ton crawler crane for the Kinyerezi 2 power plant.

After completing the final 99 ton heavy lifts on the project, our 250 ton crane has now had the boom fully extended to 60 meters in order to carry out the necessary finishing works at height. Our technical team now has the boom extension and reduction down to a six hour exercise and has maximized efficiency in order to keep operations running.

Alistair Group would like to thank our clients for making us their lifting and material handling company of choice.

Do you have any heavy lifting or power plant projects in the pipeline? Contact us today!

99T Steam Turbine Generator

Load Mass Indicator (LMI)

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For any of you who have been following our newsletters for some time, you will know that Alistair Group enjoys the challenge of expanding to new geographies. Our recent establishment of a Zambian registered fleet of vehicles has allowed us to expand our reach to new corridors. This month we successfully completed our first trip moving consumables to Walvis Bay and backloading caustic soda to Lubumbashi. We expect to continue transporting cargo through Namibia using our Zambian registered fleet allowing for greater diversity of routes to better serve our customers throughout sub-saharan Africa.

We are proud to be able to support the North Star Alliance’s efforts to promote Road Safety Awareness. Alistair Group takes the welfare of its drivers seriously and actively promotes North Star Alliance’s commitment to bringing high quality health services to mobile populations, through building a network of public-private partnerships, and investing in sustainable practices. It was our pleasure to be able to share our defensive driver training program with over 160 truck drivers from a number of trucking companies who attended the Road Safety Awareness Day this month. We continue to actively promote and deliver defensive driver training to all of our subcontracted transporters and have further refined our own driver training delivery to ISO 9001:2015 standards.

Our Mozambique entity was recently recognized and commended on the excellent performance of our team during the maintenance of an access road in near Afungi. Our TLB was used for critical safety corrections along the main access road; this included selective tree removal along the roadway. Though the continuous interface with pedestrian, bicycle, motorbike, and vehicle traffic made the task especially challenging, our operator remained aware of the surrounding activities and completed the job without a single safety incident. Now there is a road that will function better and keep people far safer than in the past.

We would like to thank our client for continuously relying on us as their solution provider and allowing us to effectively support their project needs.

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Last month we uplifted 3,000 MT (102 trucks) of copper, blisters and cathodes over a period of 24 days. Our Road Freight Operations teams in Dar es Salaam and Solwezi planned out the flow, loading and dispatch of trucks to and from the mine in Solwezi.

The 2,170 Km trip averaged a 10 day transit time on both our own as well our subcontracted trucks, showing harmony in the standard operating procedures for this shipment. We appreciate the job well done by our team down at the mine, ultimately showcasing good loading efficiency and short turnaround time in Solwezi.

We look forward to another month of uplifting copper from Solwezi.