ASRY completes major repair and steel renewal job

The period January to August saw a wide variety of ships, naval craft and offshore jack-up rigs repaired at ASRY, with two of the biggest commercial repairs being undertaken on a fire damaged German containership and major steel renewal on a large Indian tanker.

The 4,112 TEU containership Maersk Miami arrived at the yard during the first week of May for major damage repairs to her machinery spaces, uptakes and port funnel following a fire in the fuel line to one of the 1994-built vessel’s generators off the coast of Goa. The work package on the Reederei Blue Star owned vessel involved 240 tonnes of steel renewal, including a new port side funnel, renewal of accommodation, replacement electrical cabling, 12 km of new piping, replacement of three main engine turbochargers and repairs to six hatch cover panels

Meanwhile, the Indian owned 154,971dwt tanker Pratibha Bheema has just completed major steel renewal repairs at ASRY. Owned by Mumbai’s Pratibha Shipping, the vessel arrived in Bahrain in March for what the owner though would be 600 tonnes of steel renewal. However, as more and more parts of the vessel were inspected, this figure jumped to 2,000 tonnes, with repair work being completed at the end of August.

Following on from its co-operation agreement with UK repairer A&P Group for repairs to selected Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s vessels in the Arabian Gulf, this initiative has been expanded into the warship market with ASRY recording its first successes from the Royal Navy this summer. This involved the drydocking and starboard Azipod repairs to the RN’s multi-role survey vessel HMS Enterprise and the drydocking and general repairs to the Sandown-class mine counter measures vessels HMS Pembroke.

With more and more of ASRY’s regular customers investing in new tonnage, the yard is developing itself into a ‘one stop’ shop for technical services. To this end, following the opening of a new dedicated turbocharger repair and service facility operated by TurboNed and the signing of a new service agreement with Wartsila, June 2010 saw the opening of a significantly expanded machinery repair and reconditioning workshop for Goltens. Goltens has been a long-term service partner with ASRY for machinery and mechanical repairs and its workshop operations within the yard have now been expanded from 2,300m2 to 9,000m2. At the same time, ASRY has just signed a MoU with MAN Diesel as support for ASRY on main and auxiliary engine work.

As regards the offshore repair market, ASRY’s recently established stand alone division ASRY Offshore Services (AOS) continues to make a name for itself in the demanding jack-up rig repair sector and is fast becoming the ‘rig repair yard of choice’ in the Arabian Gulf for local operators.