It is not immediately clear what make the ship loader at Queensland Bulk Handling – New Hope’s port operations subsidiary in Brisbane – is.

New Hope general manager projects Gerald Randell said it dated back to 1957 and had originally been used to load sugar at one of the northern Queensland ports.

Over the years the loader had various upgrades and additions.

What is clear is that it, like other ship loaders, did not like being slammed into the hatch cover on the ship it had been loading.

That impact twisted the frame and left the loader out of action.

Normally the loader, despite its vintage, can loading 48,000 tonnes per day.

On the November 13 though, the storm that lashed Brisbane came upon the port unexpectedly.

There is speculation the storm came with wind gusts in excess of 150kph.

Because of the suddenness of the storm’s arrival the port operators had not had time to tie the loader down properly.

Indeed, they did not even have time to close the hatch it had been loading.

A wind gust pushed the loader several metres down its track, causing the boom to strike the hatch cover.

The same storm also damaged a Tenova Takraf stacker at the port.

QBH workers had only had time to partially tie the machine down.

Like the loader it was blown down its track by a wind gust, causing its boom to be twisted as well.

On November 14 when the storm clouds had settled New Hope workers started to do a preliminary assessment of the damage.

This was where New Hope’s secret weapon came into play.

Randell said the company had retained a core of engineering experts.

“These are people who have been with us for quite a while, in excess of 10 years for most of them,” he said.

“They’d done a lot of work at QBH on the ship loaders and the machines.”

The retention of the expertise was a conscious decision by New Hope management, however, it was also driven by the plans the company has for its New Acland project, which is still awaiting environmental approval.

“This is a core of people who are very capable who were just a phone call away,” Randell said.

“Having the experts on board, knowing what risks there were on these types of machines and what questions to ask was a massive help.

“There are very few people who know what happens when you drive a ship loader into a ship.”

Besides the expertise there were some other forms of help waiting in the wings for New Hope.

“We had some long-term contractors who dropped everything and came running,” Randell said.

Another benefit was the fact the port was in Brisbane.

This made logistics a lot easier. Finding accommodation for extra workers was far simpler than it might have been in a remote town.

Randell said there was minimal corporate interference in the project too.

“There was a lot of trust in the organisation on spending the money,” he said.

After the preliminary assessment of the damage the New Hope team quickly designed a plan to get the loader and stacker back into operation.

That plan, which took about a day to put together, was then put into action.

“We had a good run,” Randell said.

Things do not always to go to plan but in New Hope’s case a lot more went right than it did wrong.

“As it turns out we were pretty darn close [with the plan],” Randell said.

Indeed, the whole job was finished a couple of days ahead of schedule.

While the company had some natural advantages from its location, it still came down to the people.

“The point is engineering resources are worth something to companies,” Randell said.

“It is not something to be just let go when the bust is on.”

On the ship loader it was decided the whole boom had to come off but that was no easy feat given how badly it had been buckled.

“We actually threw away two thirds of the boom and built a new one,” Randell said.

That job has actually been a temporary one.

Such was the rush to get the ship loader back in operation, the replacement boom was not even painted.

That may lead to problems in the not too distant future.

“We’ll probably have to go back in and replace the whole boom again,” Randell said.

There was a lot of testing going on while the ship loader boom was being repaired.

“One of the big issues was other damage that we hadn’t picked up on the first day,” Randell said.

“We had to do a lot of non-destructive testing on the whole structure.”

However, while the ship loader is back at full capacity, the stacker is not and will not be for some time.

 “We’ve done some temporary repairs to that,” Randell said.

“The damage on the stacker is not as extensive.

“We’re pretty stockpile bound at the moment.

“We have to get the stacker fixed in a reasonable time frame.”