Busy times for Svitzer

Two separate themes concerning activities at Svitzer have been swept into one here, starting with the order for four tractor tugs. Now being completed from stock at Damen’s Song Cam Shipyard in Vietnam, the first two Svitzer Maimon and Svitzer Beata are due for delivery just one month after contract signing and are signed up for operations at Svitzer’s Dominican Republic joint venture with Remolcadores Dominicanos. The second pair are due for handover in August.

Deliveries of Damen’s ATD tugs are reported regularly in this column, described as ‘compact heavy duty tugs’. These examples are 24m in length and expected to produce a bollard pull of over 65 tonnes and speed of 12 knots from twin Caterpillar 3516C main engines. An aft winch will provide main towing capability and it is hoped to cover these deliveries in more detail in a future issue.

Damen has had a long relationship with Svitzer, providing a significant number of tugs for the Danish-based Maersk subsidiary with an interesting project currently underway being development of the first ever Reverse Stern Drive Compressed Natural Gas Tug in conjunction with MTU Friedrichshafen. The signing of the contract was the first such since Damen’s Chiel De Leeuw took up the post of Key Account Manager covering Svitzer following the retirement of his predecessor Martijn Smit.

Recent weeks have also seen a succession of announcements concerning the establishing of no few than five separate agreements to operate shiphandling towage services in the Caribbean, China, Australia, and Canada.

MJ previously reported on Svitzer reaching an agreement supplying marine services at the NuStar terminal in St Eustatius, the Caribbean. Svitzer have now taken over the operation from previous provider Seabulk whose four tugs and four bunker barges are continuing as part of Svitzer’s operation along with two of Svitzer’s own vessels.

Another important announcement concerned the ten-year contract for operation of four ASD escort tugs at the INPEX-operated Ichthys LNG project in the Port of Darwin Australia and staying in a similar time zone, Svitzer has reported two agreements in China. Qingdao Port Svitzer Towage Ltd is the name of a joint venture which sees a pooling of towage resources in Qingdao Port.

Another JV has been established between Guangzhou Port Group and Svitzer which will see three tugs between 5,200hp and 6,800hp operating at Guangzhou. Finally, and more recently two ASD tugs Svitzer Nerthus and Svitzer Njal (with a third to follow) have established shiphandling, escort and ice-breaking services, in the Port of Montreal in response to customer demand for alternatives.

By Peter Barker