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Wednesday, March
8, 2000
Quincy seeks
lien on MHI chief's home
The Patriot Ledger reports
that the Quincy, Mass., city council has directed the city's
lawyers to put a lien on the Brookline, Mass., home of Sotirios
Emmanouil, the man behind the ill-fated attempt to reopen the
Fore River shipyard as Massachusetts Heavy Industries.
Council President Paul Harold said the
lien on Emmanouil's $2,015,000 home may be the only way for the
city to recoup some of the $7.8 million loan it obtained on behalf
of the shipyard venture.
The city must pay off the loan over 20
years with grants it now uses to spur
economic growth. Those payments will gobble up about one-fourth
of the
Community Development Block Grant money Quincy receives each
year from the federal government.
MarAd took over the yard late last month
after Massachusetts Heavy Industries defaulted on close to $80
million in loans. The Patriot Ledger reports that the city is
third in line on the company's list of creditors behind the federal
and state governments. If it secures a lien on Emmanouil's home,
it will be second in line behind the bank that holds the mortgage
on the property.
According to the Patriot Ledger,
Emmanouil bought a home at 130 Goddard Ave. in Brookline in July
1998 using a $1.8 million mortgage obtained by Marine Industrial
Services, a company he formed in February 1998 to provide consulting
services to Massachusetts Heavy Industries. Marine Industrial
Services signed a $420,000 contract with MHI in early 1998. Before
Emmanouil's consulting firm could collect all of that money,
says the newspaper, state and federal officials capped his salary
at $180,000 a year and the salary for his wife, Joni, at $75,000
per year. During the spring of 1999, MassDevelopment capped the
couple's combined annual salary from the shipyard work at $75,000.
First in a new "green" cruise ship series
for
Royal Caribbean International
While Royal Caribbean's Celebrity
Cruises is building its Millennium to Lloyds Register
class, it has also opted to include DNV's new voluntary class
notation CLEAN DESIGN.
"Environmental Class was presented
to us by DNV in February, and we immediately decided to implement
it on Millennium,"says RCI's Olav Eftedal, technical
director for newbuildings. This is RCI's first ship of the new
millennium, and the first to have the new class notation. It
is also the first of a new series of green ships, including options
RCI now has 14 newbuildings in the pipeline.
In line with DNV's objective of safeguarding
life, property and the environment, Environmental Class comprises
new voluntary class notations available to ships embodying measures
to reduce possible environmental consequences.
To meet the wide variety of ship types
and trading patterns, two class notations CLEAN and CLEAN DESIGN
have been introduced, comprising three main areas:
- emissions to air,
- operational discharges to sea, and
- accidental discharges to sea (only covered
in CLEAN DESIGN)
The two notations are comparable, CLEAN
DESIGN being the stricter. CLEAN is
primarily for ships in deep-sea trading, but may also be applied
to other vessels. It may be implemented on board existing ships
at a limited investment cost.
CLEAN DESIGN is suitable for ships trading
in coastal waters and short-sea shipping, in particular for cruise
ships and ferries. It includes stricter requirements to prevent
local pollution, from both operational and accidental emissions
and discharges. Unless particular care has been taken during
design and construction, this class notation is best suited to
new ships. The idea behind it is that a 'zero discharge' solution
should be possible for a number of the pollution components.
For Millennium CLEAN DESIGN means
technically advanced systems, low NOx-emission gas turbines,
an advanced waste-management system, fuel tanks in protected
locations and use of non-TBT antifouling. The ship is due to
be delivered in May from Chantiers de L'Atlantique, St. Nazaire,
France. RCI owns RCCL and Celebrity Cruises.
Equilinx launches on-line marine marketplace
Equilinx, a
business-to-business e-commerce hub for the marine industry,
yesterday announced its planned second quarter launch of what
its says is world's first international online marketplace for
ship repair and replacement parts, equipment and services.
This procurement gateway will combine comprehensive
databases of catalogs with a search engine that allows buyers
to locate parts for ship repairs and maintenance.
Sapient Corporation, a leading e-services
consultancy, is the Equilinx digital\ business strategy partner,
providing overall program management, creative design, experience
modeling, and technology implementation and integration.
Commerce One, a leader in global e-commerce
solutions for business and Vitria Technology, a leading provider
of eBusiness infrastructure software, are providing the technological
foundation of the initiative.
"Equilinx is essentially Web-enabling
and streamlining the maritime procurement process for buyers
and suppliers. Currently, purchasing agents must sift through
many unwieldy catalogs and spend numerous hours tracking down
parts and services through phone calls, faxes and e-mails,"
said Jim Ungerleider, CEO and president of Equilinx. "With
millions of dollars being lost due to inefficiencies and delays,
Equilinx intends to help fleet managers reduce inventory costs,
support special vendor agreements and reduce the time their ships
are out of commission."
Created by a team of life-long marine engineers
and Internet experts, Equilinx's earch engine not only locates
specific parts, but also lists a variety of alternatives based
on form, fit and function specifications. Parts can then be purchased
fromanywhere in the world at any time of day through a secure,
password-protected server that ensures confidential transactions.
Equilinx has signed on several premier
buyers and industry suppliers as charter members, including Maersk
Line and Osprey Ship Management, Inc.. In addition, Equilinx
is supported by an advisory board that includes Royal Caribbean
Cruise Lines Director Bernard Aronson,.
MacGregor wins major orders for cruise ships
Under contracts totaling over $6.25
million, MacGregor's Passenger Ship Division is supplying a shipset
of 21 elevators for NCL's latest cruise ship newbuilding, and
a repeat turn-key package which includes 43 provisions stores
and refrigeration machinery.
Announcement of the NCL order came just
one day after news that MacGregor had won a contract to supply
elevators, escalators and cold rooms for the two 72,000gt 'Project
America' cruise ships contracted by American Classic Voyages
Co at Litton Industries' Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula,
Mississippi.
MacGregor's scope of supply for Norwegian
Cruise Line's 78,000gt newbuilding (NB 109, known as project
'Sky II') on order at Lloyd Werft, Bremerhaven, includes 21 elevators.
With this contract, MacGregor now has 146 elevators on order
for
vessels being built in German yards: six cruise ships and six
ferries.
Sky II's elevator outfit comprises 12 passenger
elevators (four of them scenic versions), and nine service elevators.
These will be controlled by Kone's TMS 600 control system, and
monitoring will be handled by Kone's new E-Link system.
The NCL specification incorporates a "luggage
mode" for two of the service elevators.Special hardware
and software will cut the time taken to load and distribute baggage,
and make this operation much easier for the crew.
Instead of luggage being brought onboard
on carts and then transferred into the elevators, with the new
system the same carts will be carried in the elevators to a pre-assigned
deck. An operator at the loading deck will select 'luggage mode'
by swiping a card in the elevator car control panel, thereby
gaining control of the car. The cart is sent to the required
deck where the car will stop with the doors open until the luggage
carts are removed, before the elevator is returned to the loading
deck.
To ease luggage flows, the door and cabin
sizes for these two elevators have been enlarged.
MacGregor is also delivering the same provisions
stores/refrigeration machinery package for 'Sky II' as it did
for Costa Victoria and Norwegian Sky, following good experience
on these earlier newbuildings.This repeat order includes design,
delivery, installation and commissioning of 43 USPHS cold and
dry stores. Centralized refrigeration machinery will serve all
refrigerated bar counters and other consumers on board as well
as the cold stores. In addition to this machinery and MacGregor
cold store and dry store panels, the turn-key package includes
all associated electric, refrigeration and insulation installations
and around 5,000 m of cooling medium pipework.
After Bremer Vulkan had delivered the 75,000gt
Costa Victoria (NB 107) to Costa Cruises in 1996, the yard went
bankrupt. NCL then bought the hull of its sister ship (NB 108),
which Lloyd Werft finished and delivered last year as Norwegian
Sky. Now NCL has ordered a sister ship to Norwegian Sky from
Lloyd Werft, and 'Sky II' is scheduled for delivery in August
2001 with capacity for 2,450 passengers in 1,005cabins.
Lloyd Werft has subcontracted Aker MTW
in Wismar, Germany, to build the hull, and this will be transferred
in September this year to Lloyd Werft in Bremerhaven where outfitting
will be carried out. MacGregor is working on the ship in both
yards: delivery of refrigeration machinery is scheduled for mid-May,
and cold stores installation starts in June. Elevators are also
scheduled for delivery from May this year, and commissioned by
April 2001.
Project America
MacGregor's involvement with the Project America
ships developed from an initial inquiry received some two years
ago, and is the result of its expertise in providing a consultancy
service on passenger flow management and provisions stores design.
The elevator contract includes the supply,
installation and commissioning of two scenic, eight passenger
and seven service elevators. All are of the plug-in type with
the steel structure planned to be manufactured in the U.S .and
the elevator equipment added under supervision from MacGregor
Finland. Each will then be installed in two fully-equipped sections.
The largest passenger elevators will be
a pair of enclosed 18-passenger/ 1,350 kg units located in the
aft part of the ship, linking eight decks through an operating
height of 21.26 m. The remaining six standard elevators will
each have a capacity of 13 passengers or 1,200kg. Four will be
grouped in the forward area of the ship linking 10 decks through
a traveling height of 26.6m. The remaining two, located in the
centre part of the ship close to the panoramic elevators, are
of the same size and capacity and will operate between decks
Nos 3 and 13. The two panoramic/scenic elevators will have a
maximum load capacity of 1,200kg or 16 passengers, and will operate
in the central atrium through a traveling height of 24.05m.
Of the seven service elevators, six have
load capacities of 1,000kg (or 13 passengers) and the seventh
is a dual-role garbage/service elevator of 675 kg capacity (9
persons). Three of the service elevators are grouped to serve
the forward section of the ship linking decks Nos 1 to 13 through
a traveling height of 35.40m. The remaining garbage and service
elevators are located aft in a group of 2+1 linking decks Nos
2 to 12 and 3 to 6 through a height of 29.77m and 24.03m, and
the garbage elevator will operate through a similar height of
29.72m.
All elevators will operate at a traveling
speed of 1.6 m/s and will use KONE MR traction machinery, TMS
600 control system and V3F drive system.
In addition to the elevators and escalators,
MacGregor will supply and install a total of 42 cold stores complying
with USPHS requirements. The total internal floor area is some
1,260 m2 of which 280 m2 will be freezer space with a temperature
requirement of -26°C. The remainder will be a mix of stores
and food preparation rooms with a variety of specified temperatures
ranging from +2°C to +21°C.
The internal free height of all rooms is
2.10 m and where forklift traffic is planned the floors will
be strengthened to accept forklift total weights of 2.5 tonnes.
The rooms will be constructed using prefabricated
panels in expanded polyurethane self-extinguishing insulation
of 40 kg/m3 density. Wall and ceiling thickness will be 75 mm
for temperatures of 2°C and higher, and 100mm for temperatures
below 2°C.
A-60 rated fire doors will be fitted to
three of the cold roomsThese new design doors fully comply with
both fire and insulation requirements in a single unit. They
eliminate the necessity to fit two adjacent doors to provide
fire protection and temperature insulation. Installation costs
are therefore reduced, and access to the stores is much improved.
MacGregor is also supplying a turn-key
refrigeration package (less piping) comprising compressors, cooler
equipment in the rooms and a comprehensive control system. The
package includes MacGREGOR's performance guarantee of temperature.
Though the ships are not scheduled to be
delivered until 2003 and 2004, MacGregor will commence delivery
of equipment by the end of 2000 for the first vessel and by the
end of 2001 for the second.
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