The Sub-committee held its third meeting on the revision of BIMCO’s International Ocean Towage Agreements TOWCON and TOWHIRE on 15 May at the offices of ITC (International Transport Contractors Management BV) in Heemstede, The Netherlands.
The CRESTWAY is the second of two medium-sized 5,600m³ hoppers that Boskalis is having built. Her sister ship, the SHOREWAY, is currently under construction at IHC Beaver Dredgers in Sliedrecht, where she was launched on 17 April of this year.
MED Marine Group is not daunted by increased competition in the Turkish shipbuilding and repair market and is planning its fourth yard. The R. Hakan Sen-led group specialises in towage, pilotage, salvage/wreck removal, escort, chartering as well as shipbuilding.
LANDFALL Transport & Towage BV and Neptune Marine Services BV recently announced that they have joined forces to form a new company to undertake international deepsea towage and offshore services. The new Dutch International Towage Co BV will operate initially with the existing tug Soliman Reys as well as the Neptun 9 and Neptune Mariner.
Royal Boskalis Westminster NV chief executive officer Peter Berdowski said Thursday a bid for the entire Smit Internationale NV company is currently out of the question.
Offshore shipping and shipbuilding group Jaya Holdings plans to expand its shipyards in Indonesia and China to ride on what it sees as continued strong demand in the offshore shipping sector.
The E.U. is serious about getting clean energy on the grid. The European Parliament has set a 25% target for renewable energy by 2020. About half of that target is projected to come from wind energy. A new report, “Pure Power - Wind Energy Scenarios up to 2030,” put out by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), shows that this is a feasible scenario, given current trends in the field.
Smit Internationale NV said Wednesday it is raising its divisional growth targets for the next five years. For the Harbour Towage operations, Smit said it is now targeting 50 percent growth in net profit between 2008 and 2012, after it said the target set in 2005 for growth in net profit was amply exceeded last year.
India has just 60 professionals to navigate dredgers, specialized ships used for deepening ports, even as harbours need their services to receive bigger vessels so that shipowners, exporters and importers can chase economies of scale and achieve lower costs.
The Scottish government has rejected plans to build one of Europe’s biggest onshore wind farms due what it said was the “significant adverse impacts” on the local environment.
The vice-president of the European Transport Commission, Jacque Barrot, has called for the wreck of the half sunken ‘New Flame’ cargo boat be removed from the Gibraltar Bay as soon as possible. He noted that the operation was underway with the arrival of the specialist ‘Big Foot’ salvage vessel, and would take some three months to complete.
Jan De Nul Group has recently been awarded several contracts around the world which together are worth in excess of Euros 1 billion. The projects will be executed in markets such as Peru, Trinidad and Brazil.
French tug crews have called off their planned national strike following a surprise decision by the port of Le Havre authority to suspend the operating licence of local Kotug subsidiary SNRH.
Nautilus Minerals and Neptune Minerals are betting that the next great metals rush will take place more than 1,500 m (5,000 ft) below the sea. Nautilus is the first company to commercially explore the ocean floor for gold and copper seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) deposits. Its main focus is the Solwara 1 Project, a polymetallic copper, gold, zinc, silver deposit that is under 1,600 m (5,200 ft) of water off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific Oceans’ Rim of Fire.
When talking to people from the industry explaining what a tug is and what it does is never very difficult.
It gets a bit more difficult trying to explain tugs and towage to someone on ‘the outside’. Tugs exist in many forms but they all share a common goal, the art of towing an object.
As we all know pictures say more than a thousand words so we have made a small selection of images depicting a tug/towage.
Tug of War
Really, this sounds more menacing than it is. Tug of war, tug o’ war, or tug war, also known as rope pulling, is a sport that directly puts two teams against each other in a test of strength.
No Tug
No tug here, move along.
Aircraft Tug Vehicle
Used for pushing/pulling aircrafts.
A bill has been introduced in the California Assembly that would, if enacted into law, mandate use of tug escorts not only by tank ships and tank barges (as currently required), but also by vessels carrying hazardous materials.
Technip SA, Europe’s second-largest oilfield-services provider, won a contract from Husky Energy Inc. for work on the Canadian oil company’s White Rose field off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Vital talks are set to begin between a towage firm from Orkney and transport union bosses over the future of more than half of the workforce at the company.
As many as 20 of the 40 employees at the Orkney Towage Company could lose their jobs.
It comes after it was revealed last month that there has been a significant downturn in tanker traffic to the island’s Flotta oil terminal. Shipments of crude oil from the Foinaven field to the west of Shetland are no longer shipped to Scapa Flow but directly to ports in northern Europe.
Yesterday, the managing director of the Orkney Towage Company, Captain Nigel Mills, contacted Tommy Campbell, regional organiser of the T &G branch of the Unite union.
In a letter to Mr Campbell, he said: “As a consequence of the fall in trade the company has had to consider the current staffing levels and terms and conditions which apply to your members.”
Mr Campbell last night responded with surprise at news of the possible redundancies. He said: “It is a shock to learn they are planning to make people redundant.
“We will now meet with the company and staff to discuss the redundancies.”
Smit Internationale N.V. has reached an agreement to acquire Fairplay Towage’s 50 percent interest in leading Belgian towage provider URS.
The acquisition will make Smit the 100% shareholder of URS.
The total consideration for this transaction amounts to EUR 182.5 million. The transaction will be paid partly in shares and partly in cash.
The calculation is based on Smit’s share price at closing of Euronext Amsterdam of December 28, 2007 of EUR 68.34.
Smit will increase its outstanding shares by issuing new shares to an amount of 9.99% of its outstanding shares, as of December 31, 2007, which represents an amount of EUR 108 million.
The cash consideration amounts to EUR 74.5 million. Closing of the transaction is expected in the first quarter of 2008 and is subject to regulatory competition authority filings and works council advice.
SMIT CEO Ben Vree of Smit says that URS in Antwerp is of strategic interest in Smit’s network of harbor towage activities and that Antwerp harbor activity is expected to grow continuously. With the acquisition Smit will be able to realize a number of synergies between its Rotterdam and Antwerp activities.
