Most case studies on this site cover a crane lifting a structure. This one covers the crane itself as the structure — the Honghai Crane, a 22,000-tonne mobile gantry crane built by Wuhan Bridge Heavy Industries for Honghua Group at its Qidong shipyard in Jiangsu Province, China, completed in 2014.

At the time of construction it was the world's largest movable gantry crane by lifting capacity. Before it could lift anything, its own truss-arch gantry frame had to be erected, commissioned, and placed into operational service.

22,000 t
Lift capacity
~150 m
Height
124 m
Span
14,800 t
Crane weight
2014
First deployment
Stage 1
Truss-arch gantry frame erection
The main structure is a truss-type arched gantry frame with two 11,000-tonne combined units forming the full 22,000-tonne capacity. The frame's segmental main-beam sections were transported and assembled at scale on-site — a heavy-transport and erection operation in its own right before any operational lift.
Stage 2
Asymmetric leg support system
The gantry uses one rigid leg, welded directly to the main girder, and one flexible leg connected by a hinged joint — a deliberately asymmetric configuration that accommodates longitudinal deformation and relative movement within the gantry frame.
Stage 3
First operational deployment
The crane entered reported operational service in December 2014, when it was used in the launch of an 83.2 m platform supply vessel — the first vessel built at the yard, and the crane's first reported deployment under real operating conditions rather than a test load. The PSV itself was well under the crane's 22,000-tonne rated capacity.
The commercial logic behind the crane

Honghua framed the crane's purpose explicitly as enabling "onshore manufacturing of offshore equipment" — using 22,000 tonnes of onshore lift capacity to assemble and launch complete platform modules on land, shortening construction cycles that would otherwise require staged offshore lifting and assembly at sea.

Before it could lift offshore modules, the crane’s own 14,800-tonne structure had to be assembled and supported through successive temporary erection states — then brought into reported operational service before it ever handled a full rated load.

The Honghai Crane is a useful reminder that heavy-lift capacity is itself manufactured and erected equipment, subject to the same temporary-works and stability questions as anything it will later lift. Its asymmetric leg design and truss-arch frame are as much a case study in erection engineering as any structure it has since helped assemble.

For further reading, see Erection Engineering for Industrial Construction and Erection Engineering for Modular Installation, which cover the onshore fabrication logic this crane was purpose-built to enable.

Related case studies: Three Gorges Ship Lift · Shenghong Refinery Lift · Zhejiang Reactor Lift

Five-stage schematic of the Honghai Crane erection at Qidong: purpose-designed foundation, 11,000 tonnes of steel unassembled, assembly and alignment under erection, completed structure in 2014 with 22,000 tonne rated lifting capacity, and first operation in December 2014, with an inset comparing the earlier Taisun crane at Yantai Raffles
The five-stage process required to erect the Honghai Crane before it could perform its first lift, with a comparison inset showing the earlier Taisun crane.
Original diagram, EE&HL Network. Conceptual sequence, not a documented lift plan.

Sources: Zhang et al., “22000-ton gantry crane”, Frontiers of Engineering Management (2025) — peer-reviewed account citing the original Chinese-language papers on segmental transport and assembly of the main girder; Cranes Today; Honghai Crane — span, lifting points and structural weight. Published figures vary: the steel structure is given as roughly 11,000 tonnes excluding the spreader and about 14,800 tonnes including it, and stated heights differ between 124 m and 150 m depending on the measurement reference.