Crane deal heads up the Wear

A Wearside manufacturing plant has won an order to build four specialist offshore cranes for use in the North Sea by global energy and utilities empire GDF Suez.

The Liebherr production facility in Sunderland will build the cranes, known as litronic offshore models - which have a maximum capacity of 50 tonnes – for use in the Cygnus gas field in the southern part of the North Sea.

The Cygnus gas field is operated by GDF Suez and is the largest to be discovered within the last 25 years in the North Sea’s southern basin.

The Sunderland factory is owned by Liebherr-Werk which, in September, reported a £1m fall in annual profit to £1.5m in the 12 months to the end of December 2011. Revenues at the company fell slightly to £39.3m from £40.3m in the same period.

Liebherr also has factories at Nenzing in its native Austria and Rostock in Germany which, like Sunderland, manufacture ship, offshore and harbour mobile cranes.