Andromeda Industries is weaving its way into the history books this week, almost one year after the Moonbi based company had their hopes sunk in a shipping accident.
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The company, owned by Raymond McLaren, are world leaders in woven steel slings for industry, and are now in the process of taking on their most ambitious project yet, two 900 kg strops designed to lift a 300 tonne compartment from a ship in Newcastle.
The completion and delivery of the strops to the Newcastle port would have seen the project come full circle, after Andromeda were dealt a huge blow when some machinery needed to test the giant slings was lost at sea after falling off a container ship, just off Newcastle, in June last year.
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For Andromeda division manager, Mark Simpson, the contract to manufacture Australia's longest and heaviest strops "is the realisation of Raymond's (McLaren) 40 year plan."
"This is the first big job where we have made everything here from the cable to doing the testing," he said.
"No one else in Australia can make something like this - I would say this would have to be one of the heaviest lifts ever seen.
"When Raymond first started the business this is where he wanted to get to - making the biggest slings in Australia."
While Mr Simpson doesn't have much detail about the item being lifted, he does know that the two strops are to be attached to two large cranes, and that they are needed in Newcastle by May 21 "for a one-off lift."
"It is very exciting - we haven't even advertised that we can make slings of this size yet," he said.
"It has all been word of mouth, and now that we have proven that we can produce them it is the realisation of 40 years of work."
The two strops are 36m long, and are comprised of a dozen 24mm thick cables woven in a 3 x 4 pattern for a nominal diameter of 96 mm.
The 96 mm ferrules used to bind the cable into strops is done so under 4200 tonnes of pressure, and the final product then tested to carry 450 tonnes of weight.