Estonian shipyard to build four wind farm service catamarans

Estonian shipyard BLRT Marketex is to build four wind farm service catamarans for Sure Wind Marine of Hexham, Northumberland, U.K. Designed by Incat Crowther, the catamarans will be available for projects throughout Europe and built to DNV class and dual U.K. MCA and German Stability rules to ensure full flexibility.

“This is first major contract for BLRT Marketex in wind farm service industry, which marks a new stage in development of our company,” said Vladislav Markin, head of BLRT Marketex shipbuilding division. “Our extensive experience in small vessel building gives us the strong confidence in success of this project. We strongly believe in potential of this growing industry and are proud to build boats in close cooperation with experienced operators and designers to achieve best performance

Dominic Abraham, managing director of Sure Wind Marine said: “We are very pleased to be building vessels at such a well-equipped yard with an experienced team. The team has developed a flexible vessel capable of working throughout Europe in a range of conditions and roles. The vessels are designed with proven technologies emphasizing reliability, efficiency and operational range and rely heavily on Incat Crowther’s experience from earlier designs. The increased size over previous Incat Crowther designs allows for extra passenger comfort and space as well as 14 tonnes of cargo capacity.”

The vessels have been designed by Incat Crowther in accordance with Det Norske Veritas/+1A1-HSLC-R2 Wind Farm service 1 rules, UK MCA SCV, Category 2 and are compliant with German Flag State requirements. The vessels will be equipped with twin MTU 8V2000 M72 engines (720 kW each), which will allow them to reach a maximum speed of 31 knots and a service speed of 26,5 knots at 85 percent MCR. The first boat will be delivered early May 2012 with each subsequent vessel delivering at 1.5 month intervals.

The BLRT Marketex shipyardoffers advanced solutions for small vessels building as well as for large sized projects in steel, stainless steel and aluminum. The company has more than 10 years of experience in manufacturing of feeding barges for fish industry, service catamarans, complex components for the offshore oil and gas production sector and offshore wind industry. BLRT Marketex is a subsidiary of Estonia’s BLRT Grupp.

November 30, 2011