NOVEMBER 19, 2015—SAFE Boats International, Bremerton, WA, will build a series of Type-F Riverine Interceptor Vessels under a contract with the Colombian Navy and Coast Guard. Under the contract, SAFE Boats will
Today, Civmec revealed that it is poised to acquire the Forgacs shipbuilding business.
Forgacs is Australia’s largest privately-owned engineering and shipbuilding company and part of the team building the Hobart Class Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) for the Royal Australian Navy, manufacturing 37 of 93 AWD blocks at its indoor modular shipbuilding facilities.
Singapore listed line with Civmec said today that it has agreed to enter into a due diligence phase for the acquisition of certain Forgacs assets and the Forgacs name.
The proposed acquisition includes a purpose-built shipbuilding site. Forgacs Shipyard – Tomago is located 14 km from the Port ofNewcastle, NSW on the Hunter River. The 17 hectare site has 535 meters of river frontage with two ship basins. The acquisition also includes plant and equipment currently located at the Forgacs Hexham heavy engineering workshop and at the Forgacs Gladstone heavy engineering workshop.
Forgacs’ products’ business, Forgacs-Broens Pty Limited, does not form part of the sale and will continue to operate from its Ingleburn, NSW and Elizabeth, SA facilities.
Civmec says it believes that “the considerable opportunities in the infrastructure sectors on the east coast as well as the long-term outlook within the defense, oil & gas and metals & minerals sectors justifies the investment.”
Civmec CEO Pat Tallon said, “This is a very exciting opportunity for our company to extend our multi-disciplinary operations to the east coast of Australia and to gain a long established foothold in the defense shipbuilding industry. It will also give us the opportunity to acquire in-house submarine building and technical expertise. We will be well positioned to capitalize on the significant infrastructure expenditure planned for the east coast and our increased capacity will allow Civmec to deepen our relationship with existing blue chip clients nationally, as well as bringing on board new regional clients.”
Peter Burgess, Chairman of the Forgacs Group commented, “Forgacs has more than 50 years’ experience in the heavy engineering and projects business and entered the naval ship repair business in 1990. It has grown its naval involvement progressively, undertaking major naval programs including the conversion of HMAS Manoora and HMAS Kanimbla into Amphibious Helicopter support ships; hull modules for the ANZAC frigates and most recently the AWD program. The Tomago shipyard has built some of Australia’s iconic ships such as ice breaker Aurora Australis, HMAS Tobruk and hull sections of Collins Class submarines. Our shipyard is ideally positioned for Civmec’s future plans.”
Subject to satisfactory due diligence, necessary stakeholder approval and the finalization of the sale and purchase agreement, Civmec expects to complete the transaction in December 2015.
Quite how, if at all, this fits in with Civmec’s submarine building ambitions remains to be seen. When it unveiled those plans it said that it had the capability to be the in-country builder for whoever won the submarine contract and that it would add a new dedicated facility for building submarines at its Henderson, Western Australia, facility — which is quite some ways distant from the Forgacs shipyard.
Just to add to the confusion, Australian media reported today that the Australian Government has yet to decide whether to build eight or twelve boats and that the French, German and Japanese bidders for the program had agreed to build them at the ASC facility in South Australia.
The contractor will provide technical expertise in preventative and planned maintenance, emergent repairs, and platform overhaul support services for Iraqi patrol boats, off-shore vessels, and defender boats.
The modification includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this modification to $27,294,245.
Work will be performed on Umm Qasr Naval Base, Iraq, and is expected to be complete by April 2016. FMS funding in the amount of $16,531,014 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity.
It has won an order to build four RAstar 3400 Azimuth Stern Drive tugs for new client Greenbay Marine Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based internationalspecialist marine craft group.
The four vessels are expected to be delivered in early 2017 and Triyards says the order is worth some $12.8 million, excluding owner-furnished equipment.
Powered by 4,400 kW engines, each of the 34-m tugs will be constructed for escort operations in adverse sea and weather conditions.
NOVEMBER 16, 2015—Like many shipbuilders along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Conrad Industries, Inc., Morgan City, LA, is feeling the pinch of the downturn in the oil patch and the drop in
It covers five vessels operated by ship management major Norbulk Shipping and owned by Netherlands headquartered shipping group Vroon.
The contract gives the shipyard a sizable debut in specialized EGS work. With all five ships also undergoing special survey drydocking, the job is the Gibraltar yard’s largest single assignment in 2015. It is the first series retrofit EGS win for any Southern European yard.
“We are the first shipyard in the region to win a major exhaust scrubber project,” said Gibdock Managing Director Richard Beards. “Our ideal location means that we are always attractive for owners considering this area. Gibdock’s competitiveness, high quality workmanship and on-schedule redelivery has led to this breakthrough deal, which opens a new chapter in the industry’s EGS installation work options.”
Gibdock’s workload included the 37,500 dwt product tanker Great Eastern, the third of the five Norbulk vessels being fitted with PureSOx main engine, auxiliary engine and boiler EGS units from Alfa Laval. The hybrid PureSOx system removes over 98% of SOx emissions from exhaust gases and up to 80% of particulates.
EGS installation work onboard Great Eastern included 90 tonnes of newly fabricated steel, the laying of 12,386 m of electrical cabling and 1,134 m of GRE pipes involving 800 flanges and elbows.
Special survey work included a hull washing, spot grit-blasting and coating job, overhauling of sea valves, propeller withdrawal, bonding of stern seals, rudder clearances, bow thruster overhauling, windlass winch bearing renewal, overhauling of boiler safety valves,pipeworks, insulation works and various other routine dry-dock works. These tasks took place at the same time as the EGS installation, with the ship redelivered on schedule and on budget in 20 days.
Mr. Beards said the time taken for redelivery to Norbulk of subsequent ships has been shortened as projects have progressed.
To optimize EGS retrofit processes, Gibdock undertakes prefabrication for smaller blocks in its workshops, with transfer to the yard’s Pad 1 area, completed in 2014, allowing further structural and assembly work to be completed alongside Drydock 1 in a timely fashion for drydocking.
“Pad 1 was pivotal in optimising workflow,” said John Taylor, Gibdock Operations Director. “No other regional yard has a comparable purpose-built zone for EGS foundation and structural work before vessels arrive.
“This has been an intense collaboration, involving different Gibdock departments, naval architects, the Norbulk project team, Alfa Laval, and our electrical and piping systems subcontractors. Optimised planning, materials purchasing, equipment deployment and job sequencing for EGS work are now part of Gibdock’s competitive advantage.”
NOVEMBER 15, 2015 — Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (NYSE:HII) Ingalls Shipbuilding division christened the company’s sixth U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter (NSC), Munro (WMSL 755), November 14 in front of nearly 600
NSRP is an industry-led, Navy-sponsored collaboration of U.S. shipyards working together to reduce the cost of building, operating and repairing Navy ships by improving productivity and quality through advanced technology and processes. Its various panels strive for the discussion of best practices and overlapping challenges.
The CostFact software that will be in the spot light at next month’s San Diego has been developed in close cooperation with naval shipyards such as ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and incorporates a number of best-practice methods.
The meeting in San Diego offers the opportunity to look at selected CostFact features. Case studies will demonstrate the application of CostFact at naval shipyards. The integration of CostFact with the CAD software ShipConstructor will also be shown.
Work will involve ship repair, maintenance, and modernization.
The contract includes option items which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $26,651,350.
Work will be performed in Norfolk and is expected to be completed by July 2016.
Fiscal 2016 operation and maintenance (Navy); and fiscal 2016 other procurement (Navy) funding, in the amount of $25,236,623 will be obligated at time of award, and funds in the amount of $23,339,814 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
The contract was competitively procured under full and open competition via the Federal Business Opportunities website; two offers were received.
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center, Norfolk, VA, is the contracting activity (N50054-16-C-0002).
The Harvey Sub-Sea is the first of two MPSVs being built for New Orleans-based Harvey Gulf International Marine.
The FORAN CAD/CAM system was developed by Spanish engineering firm Sener. Back in June 2013, Sener and Eastern Shipbuilding inked a deal for the complete implementation of FORAN.
The goal of the implementation was to improve the overall design and production processes at the shipyard. FORAN was implemented in all design and production disciplines and was adapted to fulfill the U.S. shipbuilding practices.
Using FORAN on several vessel construction projects, Eastern Shipbuilding has improved its production time and quality. Eastern Shipbuilding VP of Engineering, Fernando Malabet, says, “Eastern Shipbuilding Group received a regulatory design package with minimal details and extensive areas to be defined and refined during the 3D development of the model. This task needed to be accomplished not only with experienced 3D modelers, but also allowing the Naval Architect to be part of the modeling process, this way filling in the blanks and properly complete the design of the vessel. This can only be achieved by using a Software like FORAN.”
Malabet says, “FORAN not only cut the modeling time by 50% as compared to other software packages, but allowed different disciplines and people with different levels of training in modeling ability, to become part of the process, which made it more efficient, exact, and we had time to receive feedback from Owners and Production. Once the output presentation and process was agreed with the Production side of the yard, with Sener’s help we automated as much as possible the creation of Nests and Assemblies, creating a full package with a time reduction of about 25% in comparison with the time that it took with other software packages.”
“Since the original packages from both design firms for Hull 249 and 234 were ‘Regulatory’ only, ESG was able to complete the design and detailed sufficiently for production purposes with the use of FORAN, for all areas, Structure, Piping, Electrical and Outfitting, involving from Modelers, 2D Designers to Engineers of various disciplines. From this Model, Structural As-Builds will be developed showing a higher level of detail and accuracy than the original package contained. Finally ESG can say: Basic Regulatory Design by VARD (vessel 249) or ROBERT ALLAN (vessel 234) and Detail Production design by ESG, thanks to the use of a fully integrated Software like FORAN,” he says.
Sener, who is collaborating closely with Eastern Shipbuilding to fulfill its demands, is making a strong effort to improve FORAN in order to help the shipbuilding stakeholders to develop better vessel construction projects and to be more competitive. FORAN celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015.