Keith Wallis - Monday 17 December 2007

Hongkong Salvage & Towage, the territory’s largest towage company, is mulling plans to expand its fleet to match the growth in oceangoing ship movements at ports in southern China’s Pearl River estuary.

The firm, which is controlled by HUD, a 50:50 joint venture between Swire Pacific and Hutchison Whampoa, said its existing harbour tug fleet averages up to 100 tug movements per day.

HUD Group managing director Francis Cheung told Lloyd’s List that he expected to see continued significant growth in the greater Pearl River Delta ports and thought Hong Kong would continue to play a major role. “I anticipate a fleet expansion and replacement programme to match these trends,” he says. “We expect to maintain our status as the leading tug company in Hong Kong, and will continue to operate one of the youngest fleets in the world.”

Hongkong Salvage & Towage operates 13 tugs which have an average age of about seven years. The vessels include one tug which is on standby for emergency services outside the port.

Most of the company’s focus is serving containership traffic entering and leaving the Kwai Chung container terminals, although the tugs also serve a myriad of smaller, mainly bulk cargo, facilities. The tugs cover an area from Tap Shek Kok to Tolo Harbour and encompasses Victoria Harbour, Tsing Yi and Lamma Island.

The increasing size of oceangoing vessels, especially boxships, has led to the development of larger, more powerful tugs. Seven tugs in the Hongkong Salvage & Towage fleet provide 4,000 BHP and have a bollard pull of more than 50 tons.

Mr Cheung believed the trend towards more powerful tugs would continue. “Some 20 years ago we were building tugs of 2,400 BHP and these were the most powerful in the area,” he says. “Now the most common tugs deliver 4,000 BHP, but with the advent of larger container vessels I have no doubt we need to respond with more powerful and versatile tugs.”

The firm has a small but important international operation with Hong Kong-based tugs recently deployed to China and Russia. Hongkong Salvage & Towage also has contracts in the Middle East, where two salvage tugs, the 1994-built vessels Mai Po and Shek O, have been operating for several years.

Over the past two years, the company has become a more environmentally-aware and responsible concern, embarking on a campaign to measure and reduce its carbon footprint.

Mr Cheung says: “It is our ambition to become the world’s first carbon-neutral tug company.”

He adds: “We have published an annual environmental report for the past three years and we are one of the few groups in our industry to do so. We have changed to energy-efficient lighting and constantly strive to reduce carbon emissions and we try to offset the emissions which we cannot avoid.”

source: Lloyd’s List