ASRY Continues Brisk Repair Pace

With a turnover of more than 50 percent, 2001 proved extremely successful for ASRY — the yard repaired more than 104 vessels — 18 of which were more than 175,000 dwt. Dock occupancy remained high throughout the year with the graving dock achieving 97 percent occupancy and two floating docks achieving 86 percent and 92 percent occupancy.

Steel work at the yard increased with a total of approximately 6,734 tons of steel renewal being performed - an increase of approximately 52 percent on the previous year. Partly responsible for this increase was the conversion of Abouzar 1200 from a derrick barge to a deep water pipe lay barge, which utilized more than 1,200 tons of new steel.

In addition, ASRY also made headway within the painting and blasting arena, completing more than 3.1 million sq. m.

of painting and 778,751 sq. m. of blasting.

With the world wide tanker fleet being the main market for ASRY throughout the past year, various owners have decided to call on ASRY for work on their ULCCs and VLCCs. Owners such as, Vela Corp., Bergesen, Kuwait Oil Tanker Co., Wilh. Wilhelmsen, Andros Maritime and SembCorp.

Seeing the demand for repair work in the gas and chemical market, ASRY has continued to grab hold of this area with Odfjell as its main customer. In total, seven chemical carriers were repaired at ASRY, including the Bow Eagle, Bow Viking, Bow Puma and Bow Eagle.

Repairs were also performed on three additional chemical carriers and a trio of LNG carriers.

So far this year, ASRY has been able to enjoy the continual flow of steady work. The yard was filled to capacity during the first two months of the year, beginning with two VLCCs from Saudi Arabia's Vela Corp. - Mirfak Star and Polaris Star, both of which were drydocked.

These vessels were followed by the 301,550 dwt Hamal Star and the 284,553-dwt Awadah, which arrived from Kuwait Oil Tanker Company.

World Prelude (265,553 dwt), from Singapore's World Wide Shipping was also docked at ASRY for painting and blasting. This particular job involved more than 100,000 sq. m. of ballast tank blasting and coating utilizing Sigma TCN systems — giving the vessel necessary service life up to 25 years.

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