Experts in testing

This year, Liftal is celebrating its 25th anniversary. However, the considerable orderbook does not leave a lot of time to pay much attention to this milestone.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF LIFTAL.

In 1998, Liftal started its activities in Vlissingen (North Sea Port area) as a full-service specialist in lifting technologies. “Apart from testing, inspecting, and certifying, we also install, maintain, repair, sell, and rent hoisting, lifting, and fall protection material, and throughout the years, we have been able to assist many customers”, Hans Hirdes, Business Manager of Liftal says. “This has resulted in a lot of expertise and recognition in particularly the maritime, o shore, and nuclear industry in the Amsterdam to Dunkirk port range.”

Heavy Lift Test centre

Until 2021, the company operated from its head o ce in Vlissingen and workshops in Rilland and Temse (Belgium). In 2021, the company had the opportunity to acquire a facility in Schiedam, and apart from serving the market in many projects, the past two years have been marked by this acquisition. “Our orderbook is quite full, and apart from this the acquisition of the Schiedam facilities resulted in a lot of additional work”, Mr Hirdes explains. “The new Schiedam location adds new services to our business and it enables us to broaden our existing activities in size. Just as in our other workshops, the Schiedam facility is fully equipped for the inspection, approval, and testing of all kinds of lifting and below the hook equipment. However, compared with >> the other locations, the Schiedam testing equipment can test a much broader range as it has three horizontal tensile test benches with a capacity of up to 100, 300, and 900t, and a vertical one with a capacity of almost 2,000t. In Schiedam we have ample space available to give each of our activities a space of their own. This way, we have created three departments. A test centre for testing heavy lifting, hoisting and mooring equipment, a department for approving and certifying ‘standard’ above and below the hook lifting equipment, and a department where we check and repair large-size construction type lifting tools.”

Challenging

Mr Hirdes continues, “It is obvious that the Schiedam location was used to work according to the previous owner’s rules and procedures and for us it is important to make sure that this location also works according to our own company standards. Therefore, we had to make several changes in the Schiedam operation. This was challenging at times because the normal work for our customers continued. However, we took these challenges for granted as the changes were of utmost importance. For our customers, it should make no di erence whether a test or inspection is executed in whatever location. They may expect the level of quality that they are used to from us. Now that we are up and running, we can say that with our new Schiedam location and our existing facilities in Vlissingen and Temse, we can o er our customers a much broader range of services. And we are not done yet with improving Schiedam, a next step is that we have ordered data read-out and logging equipment on all test machines, which will enable us to registrate the tests and their results more easily and accurate. As automation and digitalisation becomes more important in our overall operation, the dataloggers will really be of added value for us and our customers as soon as this is improvement is complete according to plans in Q2 of this year.”

Load cells

Liftal has always been specialising in testing larger sizes of lifting equipment and taking care of complex assignments. Mr Hirdes elaborates, “Many of our customers can do a lot of testing themselves, but when things get complicated, or in the case of larger or heavier equipment, they know where to find us. In the past, we often had to execute the tests of heavier and larger equipment outside, for example by means of using di erent types of cranes. Now with Schiedam, most of this heavy testing can be executed inside our own location, which is profitable for an optimal load test project management. Of course, when the facilities on our premises do not su ce, or on the request of our customers, we will always find a solution in other locations. It is good to know that the testing benches can be used for the calibration of even the largest loadcells as well. Together with the commonly known classification agencies, we o er this service to customers for used loadcells, however we are also often asked by manufacturers of loadcells to calibrate new ones before they are supplied to their customers, and with Schiedam we have been able to expand this service for larger sizes.”

Total solutions

Geographically, the acquisition also resulted in an addition to Liftal’s current working area. “To be able to act the way we like, fast and flexible, it is important to be as close as possible to our customers”, Mr Hirdes voices. “In Schiedam we are centrally located in between various newbuild, repair, and o shore yards. Many of them are existing customers, but it also o ers us a lot of potential to further expand our customer base. On the other hand, the additional facilities o ered in Schiedam are also useful for helping our customers with additional services in the other regions we are operating in.”

With the facilities in Schiedam, Liftal has further expanded its ability to act as a full-service total solution provider. “Despite our extensive facilities it is not our goal to service the entire market,” Mr Hirdes says, “as we will mainly focus on the more complex one-of-a-kind projects. We are the experts in testing and approving equipment within the 120t to 2,000t range in which we o er total solutions. O ering complete project management solutions for test projects and using the innovative mindset from our team, we always strive for the best solutions for our customers.” i. liftal.com