Reaching for the sky

By Melissa Meehan
THEY won the Regional Business Award for manufacturing and JDN Monocrane’s business is continuing to grow.
Managing director Colin Smith is excited about the company’s newest project.
“We are currently making the largest crane we have ever made,” he said.
“It will be a double girder crane with two beams.”
The newest project is so big, that JDN Monocrane has to make the two beams separately.
“It is for a defence contract, for a company that makes submarines in South Australia,” Mr Smith said. “So after it’s all done we’re going to have to put it on a truck and send it across the border.”
Transporting the 38-metre span crane will not be an easy task.
“We will have to send it in four components,” Mr Smith said.
“That is on one truck, with escort vehicles and all the bells and whistles.”
Expected to be completed early next month, Mr Smith said it would take a day to load the crane onto the truck, and once it made the border would require a police escort into town.
“It is really exciting for the company and the staff,” he said. “It’s quite a massive project.”