Largest Cargo Ever Transported in the Baltic State
Heavy-lift specialist Mammoet has been selected to transport a massive, 1,800-tonne reactor for a major construction project at the Mazeikiai oil refinery in northwest Lithuania.
The Netherlands-based operator will navigate 150 kilometers of public roads to carry the 100-meter-long, 6.5-meter-wide and 10-meter-tall unit from the Baltic port of Klaipeda – Lithuania’s largest logistics hub – to Mazeikiai, a few kilometers south of the Latvian border.
The reactor is a key piece in a €550-million project to install a new hydrocracking unit at Mazeikiai, which is owned by PC Orlen Lietuva, a subsidiary of Poland’s state-backed refiner and fuels retailer, PKN Orlen.
The move, slated for August 2023, will be the largest cargo ever transported in the Baltic state.
“The transportation of the 1,800-tonne reactor marks the biggest milestone in the construction of the new hydrocracking facility, and this places great importance on the outcome of Mammoet’s work,” said Michal Rudnicki, general director at PC Orlen Lietuva.
Challenging Route
The most challenging part of the job, Mammoet said, would be preparing the route to withstand such a heavy and lengthy load. The Dutch company, which carried out a heavy-lift project along a similar route for PC Orlen Lietuva in 2008, plans to transport the reactor from Klaipeda to the refinery site on 88 axle lines of conventional trailers.
Dozens of tailored solutions would be required to navigate bridges and tunnels and steer the reactor around tight corners, it said. The heavy-lift specialist was awarded a separate contract in 2019 to carry out studies to determine the best route for the job.
“Preparing a 150-kilometer route is highly complex, and we take it as a big compliment that Orlen trusts us with this responsibility,” said Edvinas Ivanauskas, Mammoet’s sales director for Russia, Baltic and Finland. “We expect this trust to grow further so that we can deliver even larger jobs for the company in the Baltic region.”
Mazeikiai is the Baltic region’s sole oil refinery.
The expansion project is expected to boost the yield of high-margin fuels from 72 percent to 84 percent and end the production of high-sulfur heavy fuel oil, according to PKN Orlen. Construction work is set to begin by the end of this year, the Polish firm said, with the new deep crude conversion units coming online in late 2024.
British oil services company Petrofac said in October it had been awarded the engineering, procurement, construction, start-up and commissioning services contract for the project.
