DEMAG® AC 500-8 crane lifts 29 meter bright beer tanks at Brewery building

On behalf of Paulaner Brauerei, Oberschleißheim-based AKM Autokranvermietung GmbH lifted seven 26-meter-long, 28-tonne bright beer tanks into the storied Munich brewery’s new building. The job required maximum precision, which is why the crane service provider decided to rely on the sensitive controls of its Demag^® AC 500-8 all terrain crane to bring the tanks in through the roof opening.

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The task was to maneuver the seven colossal beer tanks, each with a diameter of 6.50 meters, through a roof opening with a circumference that was only 10 centimeters larger than that of the tanks. Needless to say, this required a crane with perfect precision. “This is why we ultimately decided on our Demag AC 500-8, as it is the best crane in its class when we look at the whole package. Not to mention, of course, that it had the required size and performance characteristics,” AKM General Manager Sven Bauer explains.

Moreover, Paulaner Brauerei had set a tight schedule for the lift, ensuring that another advantage of the Demag AC 500-8 would be invaluable – its ease of assembly: Within a mere hour, the crane traveled from the AKM branch in Oberschleißheim to the work site in Langenried on its own wheels, after which it only took three hours to set it up for the lift with a 56-meter main boom, a 14.4-meter LF extension, 120 tonnes of counterweight, and an SSL system.

“A margin of adjustment of only a few centimeters”

The six-member AKM team would be on-site with four cranes for a total of one and a half weeks. The reason for this was that the ambitious lift required meticulous preparation and complex procedures: “We first had to put the tanks in an upright position with two assist cranes in a tandem lift before the AC 500-8 could pick up the tanks with its hooks,” Sven Bauer explains. After this, the Demag crane lifted the 28-tonne loads one by one to a height of approx. 50 meters with a radius of 32 meters and then swung them over the new building’s roof. Then came the most demanding part of the lift: Lowering the tanks through the roof opening. To put it simply, this was pretty much the equivalent of threading a needle. “The Demag AC 500-8 can be controlled with such a perfect level of precision that a margin of adjustment of only a few centimeters was more than enough to accurately move the tanks into the building without them so much as brushing up against the roof structure,” Sven Bauer reports. Accordingly, choosing the Demag AC 500-8 crane for the job not only proved to be a perfect decision, but also a good fit for the well-known (and slightly modified) Paulaner slogan: Good, better, Demag!