30.11.2022

700t flagship for Fanger

Swiss crane rental company Fanger Kran has replaced its 500 tonne flagship crane with a brand new 700 tonne Liebherr LTM 1650-8.1 All Terrain.

The eight axle LTM 1650-8.1 comes with a basic four section 54 metre boom which converts to a six section 80 metre boom when required. The four section boom combined with a 16 metre extension topped with the maximum 91 metre luffing jib, provides a maximum tip height of 158 metres with a capacity of up to 12.3 tonnes at a radius of 52 metres.

The new crane replaces a 20 year old Liebherr LTM 1500-8.1 that it says, “had been very reliable throughout its two decades with the company.”
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The new crane in the right replaces a 20 year old LTM 1500-8.1 (L)

The new crane, in its distinctive silver grey livery went straight to work on a new gymnasium in Sursee in the canton of Lucerne. Equipped with the T3 boom and 155 tonnes of counterweight, it had to lift a number of concrete trusses weighing almost 60 tonnes each from the transport, slew 180 degrees and o[lace on the building.
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The counterweight was retracted when lifting the load from the transporter and.......

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...extended when working at a longer radius to place the beams

Project managed Stefan Fuchs said: “This job was tailor made for the LTM 1650-8.1, which is packed with modern features, such as the adjustable counterweight. Which allowed us to set the counterweight radius to the minimum so that we could work very close to the building, thus reducing the radius when installing the beams. Only when the elements were slewed over the building was the radius hydraulically set to the maximum distance of 8.4 metres. This saved us transporting an extra 20 tonnes of counterweight to site.”

"We simply wanted the most powerful mobile crane on eight axles, we can now realise projects that were not previously possible. Due to its compact design, the LTM 1650-8.1 is already a sensational machine. With the same dimensions as its predecessor, it delivers a significantly higher lifting capacity. In addition, we can remove the boom and front outriggers quickly and easily using quick release connections and transport them separately, reducing its total weight to 53 tonnes for road travel if necessary."
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The operator Daniel Heiz

This makes it even lighter than a normal five axle crane which is crucial when driving in mountain regions, where we often have limits in terms of the maximum weight of the vehicles. Also, all eight axles on the new crane are steerable."
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(L-R) Matthias Oberli and Peter Zürcher of Liebherr with Stefan Fuchs, Daniel Heiz, Kilian Fischer and Tony Burch of Fanger during training on the new crane

Fanger was established in 1940 by Paul Fanger-von Moos to supply building materials and began adding transport and concrete equipment in the 1950s. He purchased his first crane - a three axle truck mounted Coles lattice - in 1963 and the first telescopic in 1967. The founder passed away in 1985, with ownership and management passing to the second generation. The first crawler crane came in in 1991 and in 2014 the current chairman Freddy Fanger bought out his siblings - Paul and Ernst Fanger. Today the company runs a fleet of All Terrains to 700 tonnes, crawler cranes up to 750 tonnes and a number of mobile self-erecting tower cranes from its base in Sachseln, to the south of Lucerne and Emmenbrücke on the north side of the city.