Hamburg ship repairer wins marine engineering award
German ship builder and repairer Reederei NSB has been presented with an award for the best innovation made in the maritime industry in the past year at the European Marine Engineering Conference and Awards in Amsterdam.
Three container ships – Msc Geneva, Msc Carouge, and Msc Lausanne were widened in 2015, each over a period of three to four months. The patented Widening concept was developed and implemented by Reederei NSB. The service is also available to other shipping companies via NSB Marine Solutions GmbH.
Widening entails: docking a vessel, cutting her into four parts, pulling apart each part, inserting pre-fabricated segments of 4,200 tons of steel each and rejoining everything. This is how NSB converted a 4,872-TEU vessel into one with a capacity of 6,296 TEU.
Widening makes vessels, which due to their size are no longer competitive, more efficient and hence more economically attractive to charterers and owners. The conversion includes fitting the vessels with a bulbous bow more suitable for slower speeds and a new propeller. Due to the increase in container capacity, the Energy Efficiency Transport Index (EETI) improves by 30%. At the current slow steaming speeds this figure even rises to 50%. The widened ships meet the requirements of the IMO Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), which will apply to new ships from 2025 only.
By Jake Frith
