Marr crane at Walsall waste incinerator: heavy-lift and DFMA notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Australian specialist Marr Contracting is deploying a diesel-powered Favelle Favco M2480D luffing tower crane on Kanadevia Inova’s construction of Encyclis’ Walsall Energy Recovery Facility, which will convert up to 436,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste into about 49 MWe annually. The Malaysian-built M2480D can handle 330 tonnes at 15 m or 100 tonnes at 45 m with roughly 130 m hook height and no ties, and on this project is configured for 100-tonne lifts. Key picks include a 78-tonne economiser and 69-tonne boiler drum, enabling larger DFMA modules and fewer overall lifts.
Technical Brief
- Favelle Favco M2480D is operating untied with roughly 130 m hook height available.
- Crane’s maximum chart capacity is 330 tonnes at 15 m radius for heavy process modules.
- At extended reach, it can handle 100 tonnes at 45 m radius without support ties.
- Single-crane strategy allows installation of 78-tonne economiser and 69-tonne boiler drum without crawler cranes.
- Larger DFMA modules reduce total lift count, simplifying lift planning and critical-path sequencing.
- Marr’s crane is planned to remain on the Walsall site for most of the construction year.
- Previous Marr deployments on Hinkley Point C, Old Oak Common, Lostock and North London Heat & Power give direct UK energy-from-waste lifting benchmarks.
Our Take
Marr Contracting’s repeat deployment of high-capacity Favelle Favco kit from Hinkley Point C to Walsall’s Energy Recovery Facility signals that UK waste-to-energy plants are now adopting heavy modular lifts more typical of nuclear and major rail hubs like Old Oak Common, which can compress boiler-island schedules and reduce temporary works.
With Walsall’s plant sized at 49 MWe and using single-lift components up to roughly 78 tonnes, operators such as Encyclis and EPCs like Balfour Beatty can benchmark constructability against other UK energy-from-waste builds in our database, where multi-crane or strand-jack solutions have tended to drive higher site congestion and interface risk.
Among the 495 Infrastructure stories in our coverage, only a subset involve Australian contractors exporting specialist lifting capability into the UK; Marr Contracting’s work across Lostock, North London Heat & Power and now Walsall suggests a growing niche for overseas heavy-lift specialists on complex UK energy civils packages.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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