World heavyWeight champions

Street is based in the historic town of Chapel-en-frith, Derbyshire, United Kingdom.

As a manufacturer of overhead cranes, hoists and crane components, Street offers a range of lifting solutions to suit all industrial applications. Products include factory cranes, portal cranes, electric wire rope hoists, electric chain hoists, jib cranes and an assortment of special mechanical handling equipment.

Street was established shortly after the end of WWII, by Peter Street who started as a service engineer, repairing and building overhead cranes in 1946.

Street was originally based in Sheffield, but moved to its current location in the 1950s. The company is now managed by the second generation, Martin Street, employing 350 people at two sites in Sheffield and Derbyshire. Today, Street remains privately owned with a turnover of £50 million.

“The big step change for Street manufacturing came in 2000 when we launched a new range of ZX wire rope hoists,” says Chris Lindley-Smith, sales director.

“These products allowed us to grow our exports all around the world; this growth has accelerated significantly since the release of the second generation ZX hoist units in 2006 ” The original ZX3 and ZX4 models represent key innovations including braked gearbox designs and a new system for controlling overload previously unseen on pre-engineered wire rope hoists.

Lindley-Smith explains that all Street ZX hoists use a link arm overload system, that monitors the torque loading on the hoisting gearbox.

“The torque arm is used as a highly accurate method of monitoring and controlling the overload on the entire of hoist transmission system,” says Lindley-Smith. “Whilst a traditional system used an electronic load cell system, which is normally installed on rope anchor, the torque arm system by Street is simpler, more accurate and also easier to maintain. This is just one example of the innovation that Street brought to the market with the ZX hoist.

Street manufactures around 450 cranes for the UK market and 3,000 hoist and crane kits for export every year.

With regards to Street’s crane and hoist products for heavy manufacturing, the company provides a wide range of industry leading cranes. Overhead cranes have preengineered and bespoke components based on modular designs, so they can deliver a large range of highly reliable cranes with capacities from 125kg up to 250t.

The standard crane range uses the LX chain hoist or ZX wire rope hoist with single girder, double girder or underhung structures. Wire rope hoist cranes are available in single girder or double girder, top running or underhung construction and with standard ZX capacities from 1t up to 80t.

The ZX wire rope hoist, single girder crane solution offers standardised modular designs with capacities from 1t up to 25T, using modular box beam or universal rolled beam structures with low headroom and standard headroom ZX hoist units.

Street’s ZX single girder cranes truly set the global standard for excellence with an unbeatable combination of safety and operating features.

The ZX double girder range of cranes can be used for all applications up to 80t capacity. With many options for extra low profile modular box beams, submerged hoist trolley designs, heavy duty and heavy lift applications, the ZX double girder crane range is highly versatile and is used in a huge range of industries and situations where rigorous, reliable equipment is required. The double girder design is incredibly versatile, options include maintenance platforms or walkways, auxiliary hoist units and a variety of special speed and control systems.

Street’s LX cranes can also offer cost effective, low maintenance and durable solutions to lighter duty operations that require good use of available production area space.

Some key features of LX Cranes include lighter component weights giving reduced wheel loads and lighter building supporting structures; low headroom options also offer optimized lifting heights where building headroom is restricted. In addition to the LX & ZX pre-engineered products, Street produces specially engineered cranes that are tailor made to the client’s exact requirements.

Such special cranes are available with lifting capacities up to 250t and duty classifications up to M8, providing a wide selection of bespoke structural and mechanical options. ZX Special cranes are designed for optimum safety and reliability, also using in many cases, modified or upgraded standard crane components for highly tailored applications.

Other products include gantry cranes, also known as portal cranes, which can operate on floor-mounted rails. Street offers single girder solutions for gantry cranes from 1t up to 25t and double girder solutions up to 250t. In order to meet customers’ requirements, the company has a team with technical experts, sales technicians and engineers.

“This professional team can help advise and guide customers who may be buying their first new crane, we take great care to explain the lifting solutions that we provide,” Lindley-Smith says. “We have a strong understanding of how most products have to be lifted safely and we are able to tailor this safe lifting knowledge to suit individual customers operational needs. Sometimes products are especially large and require more work flexible solutions, it is common that clients have products that require turning and in these applications we must provide safe solutions that allow products to be turned over without risk to personnel, product or lifting equipment. “We also discuss the duty rating of cranes in detail so that we understand how much the crane has to be used and what the clients investment expectation is. For example, some crane applications are very intensive with continuous applications and others are light use cranes used only occasionally. “We have a duty to discuss with clients to make sure cranes are specified correctly. The problem with an over-specified crane is that the client would pay too much for it, while an underspecified crane may quickly become unreliable expensive to maintain and potentially dangerous.”

Lindley-Smith explained that a key element of Street Crane’s work involves full consideration to all dimensions of cranes. “A high proportion of cranes supplied by Street for the UK market are installed in existing buildings. Sometimes we have to evaluate how the crane will operate correctly in close headroom applications where the building is very low, in many instances Street has to provide specially designed low profile cranes to accommodate these headroom restrictions.”

“An interesting example of special design is of a recently installed crane for Factory 2050 in Sheffield where the crane was to operate on a circular track this design needed special attention to the crane travel drives and end carriage assemblies.”

“We also have to consider the installation methods for all new cranes supplied as many new and existing sites may pose a variety of different challenges.” An unusual example of this is a recent installation of two double girder cranes in a new research lab in a mine, which was over one mile below ground level.

Focusing on high capacity applications, Street is currently working for Siemens Wind Power in the UK providing a large number of cranes for its brand new wind turbine production and logistics facilities in Hull. “We are supplying several heavy lift cranes of 100t capacity as part of a total package of cranes worth over £3m. We have also installed big cranes of 100t capacity for other UK customers including OneSubSea in Leeds, Davy Roll in Newcastle, and other similar sized cranes to primary client such as JLR.” Street is also very active in the Middle East, with a very large population of high capacity and heavy-duty cranes in the aluminium smelting industries.

“Two years ago we supplied a number of 120t capacity gas turbine maintenance crane to Emirate Global Aluminium thought our local distributor Dubai Cranes. These high capacity cranes were supplied as part of a multi million crane order.

“We also supply cranes to Aluminium Bahrain, Dubai Alumium and Ma’Aden Aluminium in Saudi Arabia. All such plant cranes are very similar as they are all process duty cranes of over 20t safe working load; one critical design requirement in all applications is the very high ambient temperatures sometime exceeding 70°C.

“Demand in the Middle East is being driven by the need to further develop manufacturing infrastructures for a future time when oil reserves disappear”; there is currently more aluminium production capacity in the Middle East than anywhere else in the world and it’s very clear that this industry is considered to form a major part of continued Middle Eastern economic growth ” Street Crane is also established throughout the United States and Canada, providing hoists, crane kits and crane parts to the market through a series of new and well established crane builder distributors.

“We started working in North America in the 1990s and since then, we have developed very strong partnerships with over 15 key distributors. To support this market further, we have a large warehouse facility in North Carolina which houses a large range of new chain hoists, wire rope hoists, crane kits and spare parts all available for immediate delivery. Tim Babcock, US sales manager said: “We don’t have direct exposure with the end users because we operate only with dealers.”

Working with Babcock in the US, David Massey is Street’s product expert who provides local technical support, warranty services and spare parts despatch. Davis is also involved in product customisation and shipping of all Street’s products within the US. Babcock explains that, “North American customers are looking for modern products, the Street ZX range is one of the most up to date available today and it also features a host of unique technical advantages that really makes the difference for the US market”

He adds: “Street is a very R&D focused organisation, which supplies modern platforms and equipment, satisfying needs of 21st century dealers in North America. “Additionally, Street offers very competitive prices and a wide range of pre-engineered standard products that suit a wide range of applications, this gives our customers great choice and flexibility”

Babcock says that Street is well placed to provide ‘packaged’ products up to 90 US tons capacity that suit many applications that used to be the preserve of much more specialised types of equipment.

“Street in the UK offers special solutions to crane builders and we can take inspiration from their experience in offering special solutions, making modifications to twist towards US customers’ needs. “We have the VX hoist for setting the heavy duty standard with working capacities of up to 250t, high operating speeds, large lifting heights and the highest duty rating classifications of M8 (US Class F)”. Babcock says: “We have sold many high capacity cranes to the oil industry in Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio.”

Among Street North American partners, Ron Walker, general manger at Product Handling Design, says that they chose to work with Street because the company represents “one of the few independent hoist manufacturers in the world and they can provide very good quality ”.

“We have been working with Street for five years and at the beginning we placed a couple of orders and after that, we gradually expanded our great business relationship.”

Walker explains that in the heavy manufacturing sector there are several key requirements. “For example, we have sold Street hoist units to a local steel stockholding company where the customer was primarily looking for dependability, smooth operation, and precise control of the crane hook. Of course people also want to ensure their equipment operates safely.” Walker added: “We have never had any issues with reliability, warranty or any kind of problems, therefore we are pleased that we don’t need to go back to replace parts. “We have also installed VX open winch wire rope hoists for a steel company called Gerdau in Midlothian, Texas, and they were so happy with these hoists. They were the first units that we bought from Street and we had no warranty issues whatsoever. It was a fairly difficult application because working in a steel mill during hot summer time in Texas it’s not easy.”

“Another example is a steel warehouse in Houston, which supplies heavy load trucks every day, using 10t and 20t cranes with two 5t hoists and two 10t hoists. The company was really frustrated four years ago because the cranes they had before were unreliable and they suffered frequent breakdowns that interrupted their business quite seriously. We replaced the old cranes with Street products and the company was delighted with the reliability of the new Street kits and their business productivity has increased as a direct result.”