IN Brief:
- Allelys has added an Enerpac SBL1100, taking its hydraulic gantry fleet to eight systems.
- The new system offers maximum lifting capacity of 1,070 tonnes and height of 12m.
- Its self-contained modular configuration is intended for controlled heavy lifting across restricted project environments.
Allelys has added an Enerpac SBL1100 hydraulic gantry to its heavy-lifting fleet, increasing the company’s capacity for controlled lifts where access, working space, or site conditions restrict the use of conventional lifting equipment.
The new system provides a maximum lifting capacity of 1,070 tonnes and a maximum lifting height of 12m. It becomes the highest-capacity hydraulic gantry operated by Allelys and takes the company’s fleet to eight systems.
Rather than using a boom to reach a load from a distance, hydraulic gantries operate around the item being lifted. Telescopic legs and a header-beam arrangement allow heavy equipment to be raised in a relatively compact footprint, making the method useful inside industrial buildings, energy facilities, and other constrained sites.
Allelys describes the SBL1100 as a self-contained system designed to provide precise and controlled load movement. Its modular configuration allows it to be mobilised and installed across different project environments instead of being permanently configured for one type of operation.
That flexibility is valuable on heavy-installation work because the lifting problem often begins before the final lift. Transformers, generators, turbines, production machinery, and process equipment may need to move from road transport to temporary storage, onto modular transporters, through restricted access routes, and finally into position on a foundation or within a building.
A gantry can form one stage in that sequence rather than acting as a substitute for every other lifting method. Heavy transport, jacking, skidding, self-propelled modular transporters, and cranes can still be required depending on how the equipment reaches and leaves each transfer point.
The principal advantage appears when the final installation point cannot readily accommodate the footprint or geometry of a conventional crane. Existing buildings may offer limited overhead clearance, while live industrial sites can lack suitable crane positions or contain plant that cannot be removed simply to create lifting space.
Those constraints are common in retrofit and replacement projects. An ageing transformer or generator may need to be replaced inside a facility designed around equipment installed decades earlier, leaving the new component to follow a handling route determined by existing walls, doors, columns, pipework, and operating plant.
Higher lifting capacity gives engineers more options in those situations, but it does not remove the temporary-works requirement. Loads approaching the system’s maximum rating generate substantial reactions into the support arrangement, requiring checks on ground or floor capacity, rail alignment, stability, load distribution, and the centre of gravity of the item being handled.
Precision becomes equally important as available clearance decreases. A load moving through a congested plant area may have only limited tolerance around structures or services, making controlled synchronous movement preferable to a method that introduces wider swings or greater operating envelopes.
The modular configuration can also influence mobilisation. Large lifting equipment has little value if the project cannot physically bring it to the working area, so components need to be transported, assembled, and commissioned in a sequence compatible with the access available.
Allelys’ investment sits alongside its wider heavy haulage and installation capability. The company provides engineering, planning, permits, project management, transport, lifting, and operational delivery, allowing lift design to be considered as part of the entire movement from origin to final position.
That integrated approach matters because the optimum lifting solution can be undermined by an impractical transport route. Selecting a gantry for the final installation while ignoring bridge limits, turning radii, temporary works, storage areas, or transfer arrangements simply moves the project constraint elsewhere.
The new SBL1100 therefore adds engineering capacity rather than replacing lift planning. Its 1,070-tonne rating and 12m height widen the envelope available to designers, but the final method still depends on load geometry, access, supporting structure, programme, and the construction or industrial activity taking place around it.
Additional fleet depth can also reduce scheduling constraints. With eight gantry systems available, Allelys has greater scope to match equipment to project size instead of tying up its highest-capacity unit on work that a smaller system could handle.
The investment has not been attached to a named customer project, so its immediate significance is capability rather than order value. That makes it a different type of plant story from a crane mobilised for one bridge lift or turbine installation: the equipment becomes part of the company’s standing technical offer for future projects.
Industrial decarbonisation, grid reinforcement, power generation, and plant renewal are all creating movements of increasingly large equipment through sites that were not necessarily designed for modern replacement units. Not every project will require a thousand-tonne lift, but the difficult jobs are often defined more by the surrounding space than by the load weight alone.
The SBL1100 gives Allelys another method for those cases. At 1,070 tonnes and 12m, it expands the upper end of the company’s gantry fleet while retaining the compact, controlled lifting approach that makes hydraulic systems useful when a large crane is technically possible on paper but considerably less convincing once the actual site is measured.
