Jinxiang County in Shandong is known as the "home of garlic". Garlic has been grown here for centuries, with about 700,000 mu planted each year — the largest area of any county in China — and total output of more than 800,000 tonnes. Every harvest, plump, oversized bulbs pile up into small mountains. In warehouses and workshops, inspectors and porters weave between these garlic hills. The pungent, sharp smell makes conditions harsh: storage workers must wear oxygen masks to keep working for long shifts.
Through long-term attention to agriculture, Henan Mine Crane studied garlic storage methods and found considerable room to improve both storage practice and land utilisation. Based on field surveys, the company proposed a new garlic storage concept that was quickly accepted by many local growers.
The new concept replaces the traditional small-basket process: finished garlic is stored in purpose-built large baskets handled by a dedicated spreader. An intelligent crane automatically reads the basket code, stacks and retrieves it, fully replacing manual stacking. The concept has drawn strong interest and support from the local government and garlic enterprises.
In 2018 the (8+8) t intelligent storage crane designed and built by Henan Mine Crane for the "Suan Tong Tian Xia" industrial park unmanned cold-store project of Shandong Lingdong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. was officially commissioned.
It is the first automated storage crane used in agriculture in China. It features a long span, long travel distance, high lifting height, high speed, smooth vibration-free travel and more than 1,400 high-precision positioning points, with accuracy of ±5 mm or better at the spreader, and can stack four while passing five. Manual (remote control), semi-automatic and fully automatic control modes interface with the back-end database and intelligent terminals, allowing real-time monitoring of stored goods. The crane also provides automatic spreader gripping and stacking, automatic positioning, electrical anti-sway, remote monitoring and intelligent management.
The successful development of the crane brings the following benefits:

• High-density storage becomes possible, greatly improving land utilisation and saving space. The intelligent storage crane sharply raises the usable area of a cold store: a single cold store of 60,000 tonnes reaches ten times the storage efficiency of a conventional facility per unit of land.
• Computer technology tracks each basket's information, storage location, load optimisation and positioning, enabling round-the-clock operation with less downtime. Full real-time tracking of unmanned crane travel keeps physical stock and records consistent. Accurate positioning and anti-sway technology reduce losses from manual basket handling.
• Cost savings are comprehensive. First, electricity: the more concentrated the refrigerated space, the less heat exchange per unit volume, so less power is used. Second, labour: standardised processes supported by the system greatly reduce headcount at each business node. Third, time: highly coordinated operations shorten inbound and outbound cycles considerably. Together these cut overall storage cost by 60%.
• Productivity is liberated. The warehouse is fully intelligent and highly automated: a workshop that once needed twenty to thirty workers in bulky coats, masks and respirators for heavy, uncomfortable loading and unloading now needs only two, and loading a truck takes just five minutes — a hundred times the efficiency of manual handling.

In 2018 Henan Mine Crane was named a premium supplier to Baosteel Zhanjiang and has long been an annual contract supplier of crane spare parts to Shaosteel. It developed Shaosteel's first unmanned crane, now used in the slag bay of No. 6 blast furnace at the ironmaking plant.