Flensburger books first offshore ships

Tom Todd writes: The German yard said it had signed a contract with WesternGeco for two 127m ships for delivery in 2014. It said they would be used for the worldwide location and exploitation of seabed oil and gas reserves and would be the first ships of their type for this kind of work. No further technical details were revealed.

Yard MD Peter Sierk said: “The sector we have now succeeded in penetrating is a new and important field of business for us”. Interest in the work had been global and to win it the yard “had to beat off competition from many strong and established rivals”, a statement said.

Mr Sierk said FSG’s proven reliability, quality and dedication to customer requirements had been “the decisive factors” in winning the contract. He said it was particularly gratifying that the order had been placed even though FSG has never built such ships before. That “testifies to enormous trust in our performance ability”, he said.

Stressing that FSG, while broadening its production pallet, wanted to remain “world number one” in the building of ro-ro ships, Mr Sierk is tipping more orders for those ships soon. “Sierk expects further new orders in the ro-ro and ro-pax sectors in the near future which will confirm FSG’s position in this market”, the yard statement said.

The yard has a string of orders for ro-ro and other ship types on its books. Late last year it booked a 210m con-ro ship –the biggest ship ever built at FSG – for Oceanex in Canada and this year bagged two 151.5m multi-functional heavy lift transport ships for Rolldock in Holland. The last of four ferries for Seatruck in the UK is for delivery this summer and FSG is also building three ro-ro freight ferries for regular customer Ulusoy in Turkey.