Page 35: of Marine News Magazine (January 2, 2010)

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The Zidell Marine Corporation is a privately held, fam- ily owned company that builds custom barges for sale or charter. Zidell Marine was established in 1960 and has been building steel barges for over 40 years. As one of the oldest barge builders on the West Coast, Zidell Marine was the first in the region to build a double-hulled petro- leum barge to OPA ‘90 regulations. The barge construc- tion division averages a staffing level of 70 to 75 employ- ees. There have been more than 300 barges built on the

Zidell site, most of which are still in service. Since 1992,

Zidell has built twelve double-hulled ocean petroleum barges and four double-hulled inland petroleum barges.

With a mix of deck, tank and freight barges, the Zidell fleet hauls diverse commodities such as lumber, grain, chemicals, petroleum products, general freight, sand, gravel and wood chips.

Currently, Zidell Marine has two double-hulled ocean petroleum barges under construction. Each vessel is 300 ft in length, 78 ft in width, 24 ft in depth and will hold up to 52,000 barrels. These multi-product, clean oil barges will be deck/cargo certified for mixed use. Bill Gobel,

Zidell Marine’s Vice President and Chief Operating

Officer, said the yard works on a staggered production schedule building two barges at a time and completing an average of one per year. “They’re completely outfitted, turn-key barges,” said Gobel. The current barges will include a specialized notch in the stern, incorporating the

JAK 400 Series Socket Plates and Guide Plates, allowing for a modified tug to couple with each barge. This system increases efficiency, with improvement in both speed and time saved in tug boat operations as the notch eliminates the need to make and break tow gear. Each barge will come equipped with EMS Tank Radar Systems to moni- tor the tank levels and provide high-level and overfill alarms for the barges. The onboard computer of the EMS

Tank Alarm System is capable of tracking data from cargo operations and can generate reports to summarize the col- lected data. In addition to creating these barges, Zidell

Marine has recently obtained a small shipyard grant to make equipment improvements. This grant award, part of the U.S. Maritime Administration’s small shipyard stimu- lus package, will help fund the purchase of a new plasma burning machine, a new vacuum plate lifter, as well as additional equipment to optimize efficiency and produc- tivity. Zidell Marine is headquartered in Portland, Ore. and their barges can be found throughout the West Coast,

Zidell Marine Corp.

Photos courtesy The Zidell Companies www.marinelink.com MN 35