Page 63: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2005)

June 2005 63 ners, including those from Greece,

Spain, Italy and Poland — of which the latter could send a shiver down the col- lective spine of traditional builders as steel can be produced cheaper there than the likes of Italy can import it.

The application for funding closes in

September but the SSA hopes to have notification by the following March. "The project will look at market trends, build materials and what specialist skills are required [for this kind of work]," said Ward.

Repair Business

On the repair and conversion side, the

UK has gained a solid reputation in this sector and purely in terms of turnover is now second only to Germany having seen an increasing trend year-on-year from for the past five years. From 2000 to 2003, turnover increased by 25% to $512.6 million. The reasons for this increase as Ward remarked is because the big groups like A&P have been involved in some "fairly exciting" con- versions. Ward said: "One of the rea- sons why repair yards are doing so well here is that there is always a market for incidental repairs but we also have very specialist skills available so we can do the added value conversions like the lengthening in 2003 of the !GARIEP, a

De Beers diamond mining vessel by

A&P Tyne, for example."

This major lengthening project was awarded to A&P Tyne Ltd. in August 2002, following intensive global compe- tition. The repair yard utilised state of the art laser mapping technology before craftsmen performed the actual cutting and rejoining of the vessel. "Any time a vessel like that is off-line it means a huge loss in costs so A&P turned it around in record time. A good indication of the yard's skills is that the owner brought the ship all the way from

West Africa when there are yards out there to a European yard and A&P won that contract. It's testament to their skill in repair and conversion," he said.

Ship Recycling

Repair yards could also be best placed to benefit from new initiatives that could see the UK becoming a center of excel- lence for environmentally-safe ship decommissioning, recycling and scrap- ping — an area of research in which the

SSA is also heavily involved.

As part of a wider $9.8 million EU- funded project, the SSA is looking at the feasibility of a European ship recycling market and what kind of dedicated facil- ities and technologies would be required for established yards to undertake this kind of work. Tom Dougherty, SSA director, said "Ship recycling is a viable market and the UK Department for

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is looking seriously at the statu- tory requirements that will allow UK yards to get involved in this area in a sensible way."

A Defra Working Group has already been established to assess the capability of UK yards of handling the ship recy- cling process and to establish what kind of materials are involved, what pollu- tants are usually found onboard and what capabilities marine and other industries have in dealing with the dis- posal of these materials in an environ- mentally-friendly way.

In an unrelated initiative, Haslar-based marine solutions provider QinetiQ has already developed a computer-based 'Green Passport' program that can detail hazardous materials commonly found within a vessel.

Based on guidelines developed by the

International

Maritime

Organization for docu- menting haz- ardous materials on merchant ships and detailed consulta- tion with numerous classi- fication societies and coastal authorities,

QinetiQ's program can track and detail

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