Where the shutdown
clock never stops.
A pulp & paper mill runs continuously, so the heavy lifts happen in a planned shutdown measured in days — and every hour the paper machine is down burns money. A recovery-boiler component, a dryer can, a refiner, a turbine has to land in that window, on a confined mill floor, beside equipment that's barely cooled. We engineer the crane lift — shutdown-timed, load-path-first, sealed before mobilization. The mill runs the process ; we get the heavy thing into place.
ASME B30.5
Mobile crane standard, methodology-grade
Z150
Quebec lift-plan code applied to every engagement
24 h
Emergency lift plans — during a mill shutdown
0
Mill-floor lifts without a sealed plan in hand
Six exposures inside the shutdown window.
The mill shutdown is a fixed, expensive window — the lift has to land inside it or the whole restart slips. The exposures below are what the sealed lift plan exists to control. Every Maxor deliverable in this vertical addresses them explicitly.
Shutdown overrun cost
A paper machine down burns $50-150 K per day in lost production. A lift that overruns its slot in the shutdown sequence cascades to every task behind it and pushes the restart. The lift plan exists to keep the shutdown on schedule.
Hot-and-confined mill floor
Lifts happen beside equipment that's barely cooled, on a floor packed with live steam lines, conveyors, and process piping. The contingency matrix maps the clearances + the residual-heat + the live-line keep-clear before the pick.
Crane catastrophic failure
Over-capacity pick, miscalculated radius, boom past its chart : tip-over or boom collapse on a mill floor is a fatality-class event with a shutdown-overrun tail. Capacity utilization documented per pick.
Paper-machine precision
A dryer can or a roll has to land within tight position + level tolerance — a misplaced roll is a sheet-quality defect that runs for a reel. The set geometry is engineered, not eyeballed at the frame.
Recovery-boiler proximity
Lifts around the recovery boiler sit next to a high-consequence process. We map the boiler line-of-fire + black-liquor systems as keep-clear in the contingency matrix — the boiler's own safety case is the mill's, the lift's exposure is ours.
Roof + structure load
Many mill lifts pick through a roof opening or set onto a structural mezzanine. Outrigger reactions + structural set-point loads are engineered against the as-built — structural input client-supplied, we consume it.
Six lift archetypes. Inside the shutdown.
Pulp & paper lifts cluster into recurring engineering patterns — almost always inside a planned shutdown, on a confined floor. Each archetype has its own load-case profile and clearance geometry. The methodology adapts ; the rigor doesn't.
Recovery-boiler component lifts
Superheater + generating-bank panels, economizer modules, precipitator components, sootblower equipment. Lifts through a roof opening or up the boiler house. Shutdown-sequenced ; line-of-fire keep-clear documented.
Roll, dryer-can + section lifts
Dryer cans, press rolls, calender rolls, headbox + section components. Set within tight position + level tolerance. Confined machine-floor access ; CRANEbee 3D where the bay is unforgiving.
Digester, refiner + pulping equipment
Continuous-digester components, batch-digester equipment, refiners, screens, washers. Lifts into the pulping line during shutdown. Over-vessel + confined-platform clearance plotted against the as-built.
Turbine + generator lifts
Steam-turbine rotors, generator stators, condenser components in the mill's cogeneration plant. Precision set on the turbine deck ; tandem-crane for the heaviest rotors. Modeled in CRANEbee before the pick.
Chip-handling + conveyor equipment
Chip-silo equipment, conveyor drive + transfer components, screens. Dust-environment rigging. Coordinated with the wood-yard throughput window.
Multi-pick shutdown campaigns
A mill shutdown is dozens of lifts sequenced across days. We plan the campaign — pick order, crane positioning between picks, shared rigging — so the lifts flow without re-mobilizing the crane mid-shutdown.
Pulp & Paper in the field
From sector context to the lifts we engineer — a look at where this work happens.
The standards we work to.
The lift is our scope, so the standards we cite are crane + rigging standards. The boiler code, the pressure-vessel code, the process standards belong to the mill's engineers — we engineer getting their equipment into place.
Mobile and locomotive cranes
The mobile crane safety standard — load charts, capacity, setup, operation. Cited on every pulp & paper lift plan as the methodology baseline.
Mobile crane safety + Quebec lift-plan code
The Canadian mobile crane standard ; in Quebec, Norme Z150 is the provincial lift-plan code. Cited on every engagement in its jurisdiction — Quebec is a pulp & paper heartland.
Slings
Governs sling selection, rating, and inspection — wire-rope, chain, synthetic. Cited on the rigging spec of every lift, sizing each leg against the load + safety factor.
Rigging hardware
Governs shackles, links, rings, and connecting hardware. Cited on the rigging assembly — every component rated to the load it carries.
Crane operator qualification
The qualification + certification standard for mobile crane operators. Referenced in the operator-brief section of the lift plan so the right ticket runs the pick.
Manufacturer load charts
The crane's published capacity at radius, boom length, and configuration. Every capacity-utilization figure in our plans traces back to the manufacturer chart.
Four capability lines. One pulp & paper engagement.
Maxor's four service pillars all show up on a mill-shutdown lift. Here's how each one earns its place — inside the window.
Sealed plans + emergency response
Shutdown-sequenced mill lifts, single-crane to multi-crane tandem, planned as a campaign across the shutdown days. Same-day emergency tier when a failed component threatens the restart. Capacity utilization per pick ; Z150 / B30.5 cited inline.
Distribution + training + implementation
Recovery-boiler, paper-machine, and confined-floor lifts modeled in CRANEbee before the crane sets up. Swing arc + live-line keep-clear drawn against actual mill geometry. We distribute, train, and implement the platform on Canadian mill projects.
Distribution + advisory + training
Dyneema® synthetic chains for confined mill-floor lifts where weight slows the crew, near energized drives where steel conductivity is a hazard, and on finished rolls where steel marking is unacceptable. Authorized Quebec distribution.
Deterministic engineering platform
The Maxor software line (Heisen, Maxor Audit, Maxor Ground) provides the audit-grade evidence substrate behind the sealed lift plans — recallable lift records, shutdown-campaign provenance, sovereign deployment.
Beyond the four pillars — software built for your operation.
The four service pillars cover the lift. But most mills carry a software gap the off-the-shelf vendors never close. We build it — custom applications, integrations, and managed services, same engineering posture, same team from kickoff to go-live, sovereign by default. Engineered in Canada, owned by you.
Heisen — our deterministic intelligence layer — is optional on any build: embed it or not, your call. Either way it plugs into a fresh custom app or your existing third-party software via API.
Shutdown-campaign planning + sequencing
Sequences the dozens of shutdown tasks against crane availability, crew, and critical-path dependencies — so the mill restarts on the planned hour, not two days late.
Production + energy reconciliation
Reconciles fibre, steam, and power across the mill's process + cogeneration into one auditable balance — replacing the spreadsheet chain that breaks every time a meter drifts.
Asset registry + reliability dashboard
A searchable registry of mill critical assets — install date, inspection history, failure modes, replacement lead time — so the next shutdown scope is built from data, not memory.
Scope your mill-shutdown lift.
Tell us the equipment, the shutdown window, and the mill floor. A senior lead responds within one business day with a scoped lift engagement and a path to first deliverable.