Lifting equipment for ports, terminals and logistics operators.

Ports and inland logistics terminals don’t use many off-the-shelf lifting products — the cargoes are too varied and the volumes are large enough that operators want equipment matched specifically to what they handle. The sector relies on specialist lifting attachments and purpose-designed rigging alongside the container cranes supplied by a handful of global OEMs.

Where Somers equipment is specified

Somers Handling supplies lifting equipment into port terminals, steel-import and steel-export operators, inland container terminals and specialist logistics operators — covering both lifting attachments that work alongside existing quay and yard cranes, and complete overhead handling systems for steel-stock warehouses.

Typical project shapes:

• C-hooks, coil tongs and sheet grabs for the heavy steel import and export trade moving through UK and international ports, with coatings specified for the coastal environment.
• Bespoke spreader beams and rigging frames for break-bulk and project-cargo consignments where the load geometry is one-off and generic spreaders don’t fit.
• Overhead cranes, gantries and monorail systems for rail-connected steel-stock warehousing and inland terminals.
• Specialist handling attachments — aluminium ingot bundle lifters, pipe-stack tongs, slab lifters, precast handling beams — where the cargo mix rules out catalogue equipment.

Engineering priorities

• Environment and corrosion. Port and coastal environments demand elevated coating specifications. We typically work to ISO 12944 C5-M or C5-I high-durability systems for equipment that lives in salt air or saline splash zones.
• Varied cargo, shared rigging. Terminal operators benefit from lifting equipment that covers a range of cargoes with shared rigging characteristics — minimising crew training and changeover time between handling tasks.
• Volume and duty. Terminal duty cycles are often higher than one-off industrial lifts. Design margins reflect that.

Complementary services

For terminal operators with ongoing fleets of handling equipment, we offer repairs, servicing and modernisation — planned inspections, breakdown response and structural refurbishment of older handling attachments.