Jindal Tubular makes 300-ton crawler crane available for rent

April 20, 2016

Jindal Tubular USA, the international pipe manufacturer at Port Bienville Industrial Park, is making available for rent a special piece of heavy equipment to other industries in Port Bienville and elsewhere.

The 300-ton crawler crane with a 140-foot boom is based at the Port Bienville dock where it can load and offload “just about anything you can bring by barge,” said Mark Garcia, logistics manager for Jindal.

Jindal uses the crane to load and offload the steel coil used to make pipes. Other industries have rented the crane since it arrived at Port Bienville late last year.

Jindal leases the dock from the Port and Harbor Commission and keeps the crane there. “It’s available to anybody who needs something loaded or offloaded,” said Garcia.

The major advantage of the crawler crane, aside from its 300-ton capacity, is that it doesn’t require the time or expense to assembly it for use and then disassemble it afterwards. That saves on costs and allows Jindal to offer a competitive rental price.

There also is a large lay down area which industries can rent for storage after offloading a barge. Arrangements can be made to use the area for a day or for longer periods of time if needed.

Jindal Tubular took over the former PSL North American operation at Port Bienville in 2015 and invested $14 million to increase production to more than 300,000 tons of pipe for natural gas, petroleum and water transmission.

“We have the capacity to make 18- to 120-inch diameter pipes,” Garcia said. The largest pipe produced so far at the plant is 111 inches in diameter.

Garcia said Jindal added the water pipe sector to the plant, “opening a third market we weren’t in before. Now we have the capacity of producing energy, structural and water pipe.”

The pipe for the energy sector is used for the oil and gas industry. Structural pipe is used as pilings for bridges and other large construction. “We have shipped pipe to Canada to drive in the ground for buildings,” he said.

The spiral, welded water pipes are used mainly for municipal projects to replace major water lines. Jindal recently sold pipes to Dallas for a water project.

“The pipe is nothing like PVC pipe. We thread it through a machine line a paper power roll. With the water pipe we line it with a cement lining and coat the outside with a fusion bonded epoxy protective coating.” Some of the Jindal pipe was shipped recently to a job in South Dakota.

Employment at the Port Bienville manufacturing facility has increased from less than 50 to nearly 200 since Jindal took over.

“We are very busy right now,” Garcia said.