Smit Salvage and Donjon Marine Co. have been awarded a contract that will see them providing salvage services for the US Navy throughout much of the western hemisphere.
The salvage industry has traditionally operated on a reactive basis, providing services when the inevitable call for help comes in. While statistics suggest the number of casualties may be falling, the complexity of operations to casualties that do happen is increasing. The financial cost of shipping accidents can be staggering and either individually, or in partnership with others, salvage companies offer prearranged emergency preparedness and response services to individual companies providing a rapid response and importantly a simplification of preparation stages of incidents and this particular contract is such an example.
Smit Salvage has acquired two five-year contracts to be exclusive marine salvage and engineering support contractor for the Naval Sea Systems Command division of the US Navy. Services provided will include: marine salvage, salvage-related towing, ocean engineering and towing services in two of three geographic zones designated by the US Navy.
Smit has held a contract for one zone between the Suez Canal and the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean for a number of periods over more than 30 years which it was able to renew in addition to the acquisition of a second zone between the dateline and US West Coast.
With the award of the third and final contract to Smit’s US partner Donjon Marine, the companies are able to provide worldwide marine salvage support to the US Navy. Smit Salvage and Donjon Marine established the joint venture Donjon-Smit to provide salvage services to vessels trading in US waters under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and related US state regulations.
Donjon executive vice president, John Witte said: “It gives us great satisfaction to be selected by the US Navy to provide these vital services. It shows a huge degree of trust in our capability. And this is not just a paper exercise. During the four decades we have been working with the Navy we have also used the services of other companies to help us. Most of these companies are, like us, members of the International Salvage Union and we are proud of the relationships that we have built up with fellow salvors around the world.”
By Peter Barker
