XCMG crane package raises steel on Morocco’s national stadium

Heavy steel over a large footprint

Stadium work concentrates several awkward lifting problems in one place: long, heavy steel roof members that have to be hoisted precisely, continuous vertical transport of materials across a wide footprint, and earthworks on uneven ground — all on a programme with a fixed opening date. The Moroccan project covers a large site area and is one of the country’s most significant infrastructure schemes of recent years.

Four crane types on one site

XCMG’s response was a package rather than a single machine. An XGC800-1 crawler crane handles the heavy steel hoisting; XGT800-40S tower cranes cover vertical material movement; XCA160H all-terrain cranes provide flexible lifting capacity that can be repositioned quickly; and XCR90 rough-terrain cranes work the parts of the site where access and ground conditions rule out a road-going machine. XE550DK excavators and HB62 concrete pump trucks make up the supporting plant.

The division of labour is conventional heavy-civils practice, but it is unusual to see a single manufacturer supply all four crane types on a project of this profile, and XCMG is using the job as a shop window in North Africa.

Ground conditions across the site were uneven enough to make earthworks a significant part of the programme in their own right, which is why the crawler crane rather than a large all-terrain took the heaviest steel: track bearing pressure and the ability to travel under load count for more than road mobility once a site is that broken up.

Service from project start

The regional XCMG team was stationed on site from project initiation, with the manufacturer citing rapid-response technical support and customised solutions as the reason downtime risk stayed low. The client praised the machines’ reliability under high-intensity, all-weather use, singling out heavy lifting and earthworks performance.

“Professional technicians, quick response, and attentive service.”

— Project client, quoted by XCMG

And in Dubai

XCMG published the stadium job alongside a second Gulf reference, a Downtown Residential development in Dubai where the equipment supplied is foundation rather than lifting plant — large-tonnage rotary drilling rigs including the XR400D, working in high temperatures and dust. There the manufacturer applied what it calls a “three zeros” service standard of zero-distance communication, zero time-delay response and zero-defect delivery, with engineers stationed on site for real-time monitoring and preventive maintenance.

Source: XCMG — Photos: XCMG