Les Abeilles orders a dozen

In line with its Horizon 2010 strategic plan, the French towage and salvage company Les Abeilles, a Bourbon subsidiary, is expanding its harbour tug fleet by ordering 12 tugs consisting of a series of 8 vessels from the Piriou shipyards in Concarneau (France) and 4 from the Damen shipyards in China.

With this order, Bourbon investing $76 million to modernize the Les Abeilles fleet operating in major French and international ports and brings to 16 the total number of vessels on order for Les Abeilles. Satisfied with the technical and operational specifications of the ?Abeille Barfleur? and ?Croisic?, tugs built by the Piriou shipyards and based at Le Havre and Nantes-Saint Nazaire respectively, Bourbon made the choice to order the same type of tugs from the same yard on the basis of custom technical specifications, which were modified to boost the power and add

technical improvements.

Measuring 30 m long and 10 m wide, the more compact template for the eight-ship Piriou series contributes to better manoeuvrability enabling greater operational efficiency. These new tugs, equipped with Azimutal Stern Drive propulsion, offer 15% more bollard pull capacity than earlier models, raising capacity from 57 to 65 tonnes. This is in response to the changes in towage operations resulting from an increase in the size and tonnage of the vessels towed particularly the larger LNG carriers and mega-container ships. The 8 new tugs will also be equipped with fire-fighting capacity. Deliveries are scheduled between October 2007 and the end of 2008.

The four tugs being built by the Chinese subsidiary of the Damen shipyards

are standard vessels of 28 m long and 10 m wide, which have a bollard pull capacity of 58.5 tonnes and are equipped with Azimutal Stern Drive propulsion and fire-fighting capacity. This order, which is identical to the order placed with Damen in 2005 for the Tangier-Mediterranean contract, optimizes the benefits of the series.

These four tugs will be delivered from November 2007 until July 2008.