Boa joins the competition for work in Gothenburg

Danish towage company Nordane, which stationed tugs in the port in the Autumn of last year, has now been joined by Boa Tugs (part of the Norwegian Boa Group), both operating in direct competition to the established towage provider Svitzer (formerly Roda Bolaget). It has been reported that the Port of Gothenburg has welcomed Boa Tugs and the increase in competition as a positive situation for its clients.

Boa Tugs has also been awarded the contract to provide emergency towage cover and a fire-fighting vessel in port. The service includes providing the assistance of a tug in the event of an accident and to assist with fire fighting operations, ashore and afloat. This includes the services of a powerful fire-fighting tug to pump seawater into the port’s system of fire mains to enable fires to be fought in the port even when a reduced amount of fresh water is available.

Five tugs are offered by Boa to serve the Port of Gothenburg and Sweden’s west coast. It was only in October of 2010 the company announced the delivery of four powerful shiphandling tugs all on one day. The tugs were built by Med Marine in Turkey to a Robert Allan Ltd RAmpart 3200 design. Named Boa Balder, Boa Brage, Boa Heimdal and Boa Njord, the tugs are sister ships, measuring 32m in length overall, with a beam of 11.6m and draft of 4.56m. They are classed by DNV 1A1 Tug, Escort (NV) Fire Fighting 1 EO.

Two Caterpillar 3516B HD main engines generate a total of 5,220 bhp to drive a pair of Lips CS25-WN-K fully azimuthing propulsion units. This powerplant gives the tugs a bollard pull of over 65 tons and a free running speed of 12 knots.

Boa has also announced the charter of the Voith Schneider escort tug Tenax from Solent Towage, the UK subsidiary of Østensjø Rederi. The Tenax class of tanker handling escort towage tugs has been described in some detail in Maritime Journal and examples have been displayed at the Seawork event in Southampton.

Tenax is one of four 37m sister ships constructed at the Astilleros Gondan shipyard in Spain. The 6,936 bhp tug has a bollard pull of 67 tons and steering forces of 131 tons at 10 knots in the indirect mode.

In the announcement Boa stated, “We trust we can satisfy our customers with our fleet of five tugs in Sweden and we are looking into further strengthening our tug fleet. We wish to thank Østensø Rederi for their trust in Boa.”

The Port of Gothenburg is the largest port in the Nordic region, frequented by 11,000 ships each year. One third of Swedish foreign trade passes through the port and 65% of all container traffic. The Port of Gothenburg is the only port in Sweden with the capacity to receive the world’s largest container vessels and serves the broadest range of shipping routes to destinations within Europe and worldwide.