There are several different industries that rely on lifting equipment to move heavy items. These include construction, transport, mining, steel, oil and gas. Companies that make industrial equipment need to be able to keep up to date effectively with industry developments and with safety requirements. It is a heavily regulated industry making specialist equipment, one in which quality counts for much. Each industry that uses heavy lifting gear has different needs to fulfil:

Construction:

The construction industry is one of the key users of lifting equipment in industry. Walk past any building site, and there is likely to be at least one crane that is used for lifting. As well as cranes, other types of equipment such as hoists and winches may be used. Generally, they are used for lifting heavy construction materials into place during building, and sometimes for removing old or damaged ones. They can also be used in putting up scaffolding.

Oil and gas:

The oil and gas industries rely on lifting equipment for construction and maintenance of oil rigs and gas plants. Heavy equipment, such as drilling equipment, is used in these industries and this needs to be put in place and maintained. Equipment is also used for evacuation and safety reasons - for example, for lifeboats on offshore oil rigs.

Mining:

Like the oil and gas industries, the mining industry relies on lifting equipment to move heavy equipment. It also needs equipment to move the extracted coal (or other material) once it has been mined. The exact uses of lifting gear in mining depend slightly on the type of mining - for example, open cast mining uses different methods of extraction to deep mining and may use different equipment as a result. Read more...