Product of the Month – Machinery Moving
Christmas is the time for giving and sharing. It’s also the time for moving. Which is why our December Product of the Month is Machinery Moving.
Why moving? Well, Hird’s machinery moving teams have helped multiple food manufacturers prepare their production lines, of the last 12 months or so, to create festive treats by the thousand.
Their expertise and lifting equipment, including mini cranes and mobile cranes, have assisted food and drink factories in reconfiguring production facilities many times.
Also, given all the stuff we Brits purchase, transport and gift over the Christmas period, it feels apt to focus on machinery moving for the last Product of the Month of the year.
Moving out old fridges, ovens, TVs, tables, and chairs to make room for (usually) bigger ones before Christmas is part of the joy of the season (yeah, right).
Then, we spend the rest of the festive break moving stuff around the home to make way for all those presents. For Hird’s machinery moving professionals, Christmas is a real busman’s holiday.
Expertise and can-do spirit
Hird has been carrying out machinery moving projects, as contract lifts, for clients all over the UK for more than four decades. Think of it like playing with Christmas Lego presents, but on a grand scale.
When a company needs to maintain complex machinery, or change it all together, or install brand new machinery, for example in a new food factory, it knows it can turn to Hird for expert help.
The company combines the know-how, the equipment, and the sheer can-do spirit that are all essential for a successful machine moving service.
Its machinery moving teams are trusted to expertly develop a move plan, then implement it with the agility needed to overcome challenges as they arise.
It is often a complicated process, carried out against the clock with a lot at stake. There is no compromise on one thing, though: the safety of the Hird team, client colleagues, and the public is paramount.
As well as working in the food production sector, Hird provides machinery moving services for data centres, the aerospace industry, in dockyards, and for the heavy engineering and pharma sectors.
Ultra-modern Valla V cranes
Every machinery moving project begins with a free site survey carried out by one of our appointed persons. They then draw up a detailed lifting plan, or plans, depending on the lifts and moves that are needed.
Central to Hird’s machinery moving service is the company’s large fleet of Valla industrial pick and carry cranes, They are purpose designed to lift and carry machinery of all types and sizes.
In most cases, one or more of the company’s rapidly growing fleet of Valla V Series mini cranes will be used.
These are the latest battery electric pick and carry cranes. So, they generate no fumes and no carbon emissions during lifts, shrinking the carbon footprint of every machinery moving project Hird completes.
Valla V Series cranes can operate indoors and outdoors, so can be used to lift loads off lorries and then taken into factories and other buildings to be installed.
They are also exceptionally compact, and all can be operated with a wireless remote control unit, allowing the mini cranes to be positioned in the best possible location to carry out a lift.
The mini crane that can grow
A good example of such a crane in action on a machinery moving project was the use of a Valla V130RX mini crane to remove a cooler from a chilled foods warehouse, and lift in a new one.
The pick and carry crane has an extendable chassis. With the chassis in its closed position, the Valla V130RX can be moved into a very tight spaces. Once in place, the chassis can be extended.
This improves the crane’s stability and increases its lifting capacity. Deployment of a hydraulically-controlled stabilising bar at the front of the crane increases lifting duties still further.
The technology was used to support the lifting out of the in situ 2.1t cooler, sited on a raised internal platform at a warehouse in Kettering, Northamptonshire. It was then replaced with a new unit, weighing 900kg.
With the crane’s fly jib deployed and the chassis extended, Hird’s mini crane operator could boom out to a radius of 5m, and a maximum tip height of 4m, with a maximum safe working load (SWL) of 2.8t.
The Valla V130RX mini crane is just 1,525mm wide, yet has a SWL of 13t, a maximum working height of 10.5m (SWL: 6t), and a maximum radius of 6.2m (SWL: 1.7t).
Two cranes can be better than one
If a machinery moving project needs greater lifting power, Hird has that in abundance too. It is central to every Hird lifting plan to apply the most appropriate lifting and moving machines and techniques.
Mobile cranes are used to lift heavier loads at greater heights in external environments. Hird operates two mobile cranes, a 60t Liebherr LTM1060 3.1, and a 100t Grove GMK4100L.
However, the machinery moving teams will bring in mobile cranes with higher lifting capacities if they are needed for a specific task.
In a project carried out in 2025, Hird used two mobile cranes, including the Grove GMK4100L, in a tandem lift of refrigeration equipment into a distribution centre in Manchester.
The lift was part of a wider improvement project that involved more than 20 contractors. This demonstrates another strength of Hird machinery moving teams: seamless coordination of our operations with the equally-important work carried out by the end client and other members of its supply chain.
Planning for machinery moving success
A second project demonstrated another important strength: meticulous planning. Hird was commissioned to lift an air compressor into a major acute hospital in the centre of a large city in Yorkshire.
There was a restriction on positioning the company’s Liebherr LTM1060 3.1 mobile crane because of the location of a motorway tunnel under the hospital estate.
Also, Hird’s machinery moving team had to develop a plan with hospital emergency medical teams to shut down lift operations at a moment’s notice because of the mobile crane’s proximity to the roof-top emergency helipad.
Weeks of planning allowed the lift to go ahead, and the compressor was lifted in without a hitch. Sometimes, with machinery moving, the most simple projects take the most time to implement, and need the most work.
Find out more
Have you got a machinery moving project you need help with? Talk to Hird today. Our machine removal, transportation and installation teams are ready to assist.
Telephone: 01482 227333. Email: [email protected].