Tug delivery round-up

Batteries in Maritime	Autonomy at Sea	Alternative Fuels	Tugs, Towing & Salvage

Examining the growing role of batteries in maritime, questioning their green credentials while exploring industry insights, operator experiences and lessons learned from early electric vessel adoption worldwide.	Highlighting the innovators advancing subsea and maritime technology, from autonomous underwater swarms to cloud-connected assets and data-driven predictive models, reshaping how real-time conditions at sea are understood globally today.	Exploring one of the workboat sector’s dilemmas today: which emerging fuels hold the most promise in terms of cost, availability, practicality and performance? Or should we simply clean up the Black Gold?	Looking at how tugs, towing and salvage vessels are adapting to stricter regulations; contemplating new propulsion technologies and alternative fuels; and changing design strategies for one of maritime’s most demanding sectors.
Read More	Read More	Read More	Read More

Seawork 15th - 17th June 2027	Speed@Seawork 14th June 2027	Seawork Conferences

The 28th edition of Europe’s largest commercial marine and workboat exhibition provides businesses the opportunity to showcase their services, equipment, vessels and supplies to an international audience.	Speed@Seawork on 14th June in Cowes offers a sector specific event that showcases fast vessels operating at high speed for security interventions and Search & Rescue.	Taking place at the annual Seawork Exhibition in Southampton, UK from 15–17 June 2027, Seawork Conferences deliver a varied programme of sessions featuring expert speakers addressing the latest topical issues in the commercial marine industry.
Visit the Seawork Website	Speed@Seawork on the Seawork Website	View on Seawork

There are ten recent deliveries of note to report this month from shipyards both within Europe and those beyond with important European content.

From the start of January Svitzer is expanding its towage service into Emden in Germany and in preparation for this new operation took delivery recently of a MED-A2360 series tug named Svitzer Vestri from Turkey’s Med Marine.

Svitzer reports the 62tbp tug as ‘compact yet robust enabling greater manoeuvrability without compromising power, even in narrow and shallow ports.’ As well as serving at Emden and on a wider basis, the tug may be called on to support other operations throughout the Scandinavian and German cluster as part of Svitzer’s flexible operating model.

It marks a busy period for Med Marine’s connection with Svitzer with two RAL TundRA 3000 ice-breaking tugs also under construction. Designed for a range of environments across Svitzer’s Scandinavian operations we hope to return and look closer at these tugs once delivered early in 2021.

Sanmar Shipyards draws attention to the importance of building long-term relationships with its customers allowing an understanding of their operational needs related to specification, design and build stages of vessels entrusted to them. A healthy relationship clearly exists between Sanmar and Hans Schramm & Sons Schleppschifffahrt, the German tug operator recently taking delivery of its fifth newbuild Sanmar tug in the ‘technologically advanced and powerful’ RAL TRAktor-Z 2500SX ATD tug Sönke (launched as Deliçay VII). Caterpillar main engines develop 4,200kW in total driving Kongsberg FP thrusters providing 70tbp. This new addition to the Hans Schramm family will operate at the intersection of the river Elbe, North Sea, Baltic Sea and Kiel Canal.

Another tug operator returning to Sanmar is Sea of Marmara-based Arpas who has acquired two very different vessels. Nehir is not a newbuild as such but part of Sanmar’s own fleet, built in 2003 and now transferred to Arpas. It is based on the RAL TS 22/40 design with conventional propulsion arrangement providing 30tbp and speed 12.5kn via twin FP propellers powered by 825kW main engines.

Arpas-15 (ex Sirapinar XVI) meanwhile is certainly a newbuild addition for Arpas, a RAL RAmparts 2200 tug delivering 50tbp via Caterpillar main engines developing 3,000kW and powering Schottel FP thrusters. The MLC-compliant ASD tug has a split-drum towing winch forward and an external fire-fighting capability. They are the fourth and fifth Sanmar-built tugs for Arpas, the previous three being variants of the successful Ulupinar series which Sanmar discontinued last year in favour of a new technologically advanced tug range.

Moving beyond European-built tugs, Robert Allan Ltd has a long history of references with Chinese shipyards and two separate pairs of RAstar and RAmparts designs of note have emerged from yards for regional owners.

Earlier in 2020 Yiu Lian Dockyards took delivery of the RAstar 3200-CL tugs Hai Kun and Hai Peng, from Cheoy Lee Shipyards. The escort-rated pair are powered by Niigata main engines and Z-Peller propulsion units delivering 88tbp with Helsinki, Finland-based MacGregor supplying a forward mounted hydraulic anchor windlass/double drum escort towing winch and a Mampaey disc-type towing hook aft.

Singapore’s PSA Marine operate a fleet of over 30 modern tugs with an average age of less than ten years and dominated by Robert Allan designed vessels including eleven RAmparts and nine Z-Tech tugs. Two more RAmparts 3200 examples have now joined the line-up, PSA Marvel and PSA Valkyrie, incorporating improvements from two similar designs PSA Thor and PSA Hulk delivered in 2018.

Built by PaxOcean Engineering Zhuhai Co Ltd, this latest pair feature uniquely styled wheelhouse and deckhouse designs developed exclusively for PSA Marine creating what RAL describe as ‘an outstanding and appealing appearance.’

PSA Thor and PSA Valkyrie are classed by Lloyd’s Register with notation including Escort Tug and Fire Fighting Ship 1 with Water Spray. Caterpillar 3516C main engines provide power to two Schottel SRP 510 Z-drives with auxiliary power supplied by two Cummins gensets. On trials performance expectations were exceeded including a bollard pull of 83.5t and speed ahead 13.5kn.

Towing is over either bow or stern with Rolls-Royce providing an ETWH 2000/800 single split-drum winch forward and a TW 2000/100 single drum winch aft, MacGregor meanwhile supplies a MG-HUW-05-UL tugger winch with Palfinger providing a PK1200 deck crane.

By Peter Barker