Offshore focus amid staple work keeps German yards in business

Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven MD Ruediger Pallentin was quoted as saying in early May: “The yard is well booked with repair contracts. All the docks are full”. Among them, in the yard’s big Floating Dock 111, was the 45,362dwt container ship Norfolk Express for bulbous bow repairs. She ran aground off Wilhelmshaven and was one of several accident-prone boxships to dock at German repair yards recently.
Two former ferries, Wind Ambition (ex Palau) of 13,336gt and Wind Resolution (ex Sesme) of 8,893gt – both now floating hotel accommodation ships - docked together in the Kaiserdock 11 for survey, steel and pipe repairs and class renewal. Another passenger ship caller was the 6,417gt National Geographic Explorer, formerly Hurtigruten’s Midnatsol. Sold and converted into a Polar expedition ship in 2008, she came for three weeks of “comprehensive technical and class work”.
Mr Pallentin told The Motorship that job was “just right for us”. It involved shaft modification and the installation of new propeller hubs, renewal of aft and forward bow thrusters, partial renewal of steel and aluminium joints and the renewal of A-60 doors, all in the accommodation areas, as well as blasting and painting of the forepeak tank and various dock, repair and maintenance work.
LWB project manager Carl Ratjen said the biggest challenges were the sizeable workload and the demanding time schedule, which also included class work on the ice-classed ship. Mr Pallentin said LWB understood swift turnaround times: “It is one of our talents that we can complete complex jobs inside the shortest possible time”.
He also saw the first visit of the National Geographic Explorer as a chance for further possible work, noting that her owners had a similar second ship.
The 69,203gt AIDAbella also called and she too was a first timer. In fact LWB said it was the first time any AIDA fleet ship had called for technical work - in this case nine days of hull conservation, tank cleaning, crankshaft and rudder work, gangway weight tests and valve maintenance.
Mr Pallentin said: "She’s an eye-catching ship but not a big job". Again however he was looking to potential future business when he observed that “AIDA Cruises is a new customer for us and it does not matter how big the job is. After all, the other nine cruise liners belonging to AIDA are also of a size which can be handled by Lloyd Werft”.
Cruise ship repair, maintenance, conversion and completion has been a staple part of the profile at LWB for many years and Mr Pallentin said it will remain so as the yard now diversifies into offshore. It is also no stranger to that sector. It converted the drill ship Danwood Ice more than 40 years ago and, more recently, the service vessels Blue Giant and OIG Giant II.
The current diversification is already paying off. Close to where the 251m AIDAbella docked was the 93m, 4,600dwt platform supply ship Island Centurion. Her conversion into a specialised oil and gas well service vessel is expected to be completed later this year.
Island Centurion "demands all our know-how, experience, flexibility and engineering knowledge", said Mr Pallentin. “It is a complicated conversion into a specialised vessel of the highest quality – just the kind of job we like and one which will demonstrate our capabilities".
Sister ship Island Captain is now also being converted. Sources said she would be completed by about the end of the year. She arrived at LWB just as The Motorship was going to press.
Not only LWB’s production profile has changed. So too has its shareholding background. Giant Bremen port and logistics group BLG has bought the 13.6% shareholding in LWB formerly held by Bremen economic promotion body BfW for €4.8 million. The BfW has also sold its share in a dock at the BREDO shipyard. The resultant total €8.5 million is being invested in widening LWB’s 281m long and 38m wide, 35,000 ton capacity Floating Dock 111 in the Kaiserhafen – the one just used for Norfolk Express.
That expansion will give LWB and its neighbouring associate, the new German Dry Docks (GDD), more repair capacity in the Kaiserhafen for bigger local shipping business like cruise and container ships and car carriers. It will also be better able to exploit the new advantages of the recently enlarged Kaiserschleuse Lock.
“For many years we have complained about shipyards working against each other. That is now history”, said Ruediger Pallentin. “We are now marketing six dry or floating docks jointly and complementing one another on the international market. Even after just a few months, we are seeing the synergies and advantages of this. All our employees are fully occupied. We at Lloyd Werft continue to specialise in conversion, newbuilding and offshore while GDD concentrates mainly on the repair of merchant and naval ships”.
Work in just the first few months of GDD operation has indeed been wide-ranging and has earned some customer praise. There is hardly a vessel type that has not called of late for work which MD Uwe Beck told The Motorship covered mainly routine class and damage repairs.
As The Motorship went to press, the two Russian Polar expedition sisters Akademik Ioffe and Akademik Sergey Vavilov came for pre-Arctic season overhaul. Originally built for research, the 6,450gt ice-strengthened ships now operate on the expedition cruise market.
Other GDD jobs included the dry-docking of the 91.4m seismic ship Pacific Explorer for repairs and overhaul, work on three oil/chemical tankers - the 5,498dwt Stolt Fulmar, the 13,050dwt Hornisse and the 24,064dwt Apatura - and work on the 3,183gt LPG tanker Lady Hilde and the floating crane Jade Lift 1. Uwe Beck said other jobs were the German frigate Schleswig Holstein, the trailing suction hopper dredger HAM 136, the 12,654 cargo ship Rike, the 79m offshore supply ship Vos Sympathy, the 22,382gt ferry Dana Sirena (repainted and renamed Sirena Seaways) and the German corvette Magdeburg.
Berthed alongside were the 6,067dwt cargo/container ship Flinterhaven and the 84m research and survey vessel Ocean Discovery. So too was the 42,102dwt container ship Lisa Schulte. An owner representative was quoted as saying GDD work on her was to “high professional standards”. She was involved in a collision in the Weser Estuary with the 47,286dwt bulker Coral Ace. GDD also repaired Coral Ace’s 12m hull gash.
At Bremerhavener Dockbetrieb (BREDO), new managing director Dirk Harms told The Motorship that despite the bad weather, business had stayed “very satisfactory” with “almost continuous booking of our four docks, mainly by regular customers”. He reported diverse “routine” work in the wake of the repair and overhaul this year of a trio of Hurtigruten ships - Nordnorge, Midnatsol and Kong Harald.
Due at BREDO as The Motorship went to press in early June for a nearly two week stay and unspecified work was the 8,378gt cruise ship Hansaeatic.
She was following the 13,000dwt container feeder Conmar Avenue, involved in a collision in the Outer Weser in early May with the 88,669dwt Maersk Kalmar. BREDO’s photo of the docked Conmar Avenue shows her substantial bow deformation.
Other recent visitors to BREDO included the 79m general cargo ship Oeland for general dock work and Germany’s 78m emergency stand-by tug Nordic for unspecified engineering work. Two further specialist German ships also called for what Mr Harms said were “planned extensive maintenance programmes”. They were the 71.5m oil recovery and buoy-laying vessel Mellum and the 64m fisheries research ship Walther Herwig III.
In Hamburg Blohm + Voss Repair spokesman Michael Brasse said the yard was still concentrating on three business sectors - cruise, offshore oil and gas and yacht refit as decided by new British owners Star Capital.
Two giant FPSOs were still at the yard as of early June undergoing life extension work. Mr Brasse told The Motorship the estimated delivery time for the 20,800 dwt Petrojarl Banff was now the third quarter of this year while a date for the completion of the 92,000dwt FPSO EnQuest Producer had not yet been fixed.
However despite the offshore focus, a wide variety of merchant vessels continue to call. They have included the 17,822dwt container ship Charlotta B, for bow thruster and cell guide repairs and the 14,355dwt trailing suction hopper dredger Barent Zanen for rudder and door repairs. Two general cargo ships - the 12,501dwt Lone and the 2,780dwt Rockanje came for unspecified work and the 73.4m platform supply ship E.R. Kristiansand berthed alongside for three weeks of main engine repairs.
In the cruise sector, the 154,407gt Independence of the Seas docked for just over a week of dry-docking, hull cleaning and conservation, general repairs and class work. Work also included the overhaul of three pod drives and four bow thrusters. Owners RCI described her stay as a “slightly less extensive upgrade” than that announced in January, but one still reportedly costing €7 million.
The 116,017gt cruise ship Ventura docked at B+V Repair for a week. Work covered hull cleaning and conservation. Three of her transverse thrusters were overhauled, both shafts were inspected and general repairs and class work carried out. A third cruise ship, the 28,518gt Albatros, was dry-docked for three weeks of work also covering hull cleaning and conservation as well as the overhaul of two transverse thrusters, general repairs and class renewal work.
The second of two yard ownership changes this year took place as planned in May when Peene-Werft in Wolgast became part of the Luerssen Group, providing that expanding owner with its first east German Baltic base.
The hand-over prompted rare media comment from Friedrich Luerssen to the effect that Peene will be used for naval and merchant repair and to support Luerssen yacht building. There was however no news of fresh repair projects and the yard’s first job was newbuilding for Luerssen - two 70m bows for Type F125 frigates, an order transferred to keep Wolgast busy.
The first yard ownership change – the sale of Lindenau Schiffswerft in Kiel to ADM subsidiary Privinvest in January - has been followed by news that Lindenau will keep its name, if not its newbuilding tradition. Group leader Nobiskrug said Lindenau would focus on the repair, conversion and servicing of merchant, local authority and naval vessels.
Cementing the change has been the demolition of the yard’s newbuilding slipway and associated facilities ending nearly 60 years of newbuilding. Nobiskrug had no comment about that, but the site clearly is needed to develop the yard’s repair role. Employees were also reported happy to see investment returning to the site after several years of uncertainty.
Lindenau repair activity meanwhile was also still encouraging. Reflecting the wide range of ships being docked, as well as local yard competence, were the 53.2m offshore supply ship/tug Noortruck, the 9,500dwt container feeder Trans Anund and the 83.5 naval auxiliary ship Oker as well as the 50m North Sea ferry Baltica. Two very different ships built by Lindenau also docked: the 188m double-hulled tanker Seatrout and, at the other end of the scale, the 32.7m local SFK ferry Heikendorf which was that owner’s third ship to visit Lindenau recently. She followed the tugs Holtenau and Kiel.
Lindenau built the hull of the unusual ro-lo cargo ship E-Ship 1, which has auxiliary Flettner rotor drive. As this issue of The Motorship went to press she was berthed at Cassens in Emden after developing what reports said were “technical problems”.
She arrived there in January and the reports spoke of repairs and modifications to her Diesel generators, but appeared to agree that the problems did not lie with her innovative Flettner propulsion system. The repairs were expected to last until well into the summer however E-Ship 1 owner German wind turbine manufacturer Enercon was saying nothing officially about the problems as The Motorship went to press.
Finally, the continuing work load at Schiffswerft Diedrich in Oldersum remains inspiring. The small yard, which always appeared to be packed with boats and ships, has been busy with routine work like coating and hull conservation as well as propeller, shaft and rudder inspection on a seemingly never-ending series of vessels.
Just a few of the latest visitors have been the 36m mussel cutter Ursula, the motor ship Stoertebeker, the fishing cutter Medusa, Emden police patrol boat W25 and Wilhelmshaven’s W5 as well as seasonal repair, maintenance and inspection work on the 58.2m ferry Frisia VIII, the 42.4m Langeoog III, the 51.9m Frisia VII, the 38.8m Wappen von Borkum and the 32m Baltrum III, among many others.
Source: Motor Ship