A UK facility of aeroplane engine manufacturer Rolls Royce has purchased a 500kg capacity mobile lifting gantry.

The facility, a maintenance department of Rolls Royce Ansty, near Coventry, uses the gantry to lift grinding machine heads, motors, valves and electric coolant pumps.

The workshops do not have access to overhead cranes, nor much spare floorspace to manoeuvre forklift trucks. Before the gantry, the company would put up a rolled steel joist girder and hang a block and tackle from it, a job that could take a week.

“We can manoeuvre Porta-Gantry in and out of machines and into places where we couldn’t reach normally,” said maintenance supervisor John Powell.

The gantry, manufactured by Reid Lifting, was recommended by Ryona Engineering of Coventry.