Great Eastern to retrofit tanker with Kappel FPP

Kappel fixed pitch propeller

DECEMBER 3, 2013 — India’s Great Eastern Shipping Company (GESCO) has signed a contract with MAN Diesel & Turbo’s PrimeServ  that will see a 105,000 dwt crude tanker built in 2004 retrofitted with a Kappel fixed pitch propeller retrofit.

After a decade’s cooperation with inventor J.J. Kappel, MAN Diesel & Turbo took over the Kappel design business in 2012. The fuel savings and performance characteristics of controllable-pitch propellers featuring the unique Kappel blade design have been well documented over the last five years. It has since been further developed in terms of fixed-pitch propellers and MAN Diesel & Turbo recently added the Kappel design to its fixed-pitch propeller portfolio, both for newbuildings and as a retrofit solution to vessels already in service.

Retrofit calculations on different fixed-pitch propellers evaluated for the Great Eastern ship, the M/T Jag Lavanya, show the superiority of the Kappel design.

Christian Wollerup Sørensen, Sales Manager, MAN Diesel & Turbo said: “With this vessel’s speed and operating profile, the new Kappel propeller will deliver a fuel saving of 4% together with a reduced level of pressure impulses to hull – and without adding any other, efficiency-improving devices.”

The four-bladed, 6.9 meter Kappel propeller for the Jag Lavanya will be delivered from China in January 2014.

“As a result of the excellent and efficient cooperation between the Mumbai shipowners and MAN Diesel & Turbo’s India and Frederikshavn locations – and last, but not least, our Dalian Marine Propeller (DMPC) production partner in China – we agreed upon an extraordinarily short delivery time to match a planned docking by the vessel,” said Mr. Sørensen.

Propeller production in China MAN Diesel & Turbo’s prolific partnership with Dalian Marine Propeller was recently confirmed with another order – a production agreement for a series of 7.2-meter Kappel propellers for the world’s largest car carriers to be built by Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry, China.