Scrubber installations keep GDD busy

Docking at the Bremerhaven yard in December was

Pulpca

, the latest of six Transfennica ships to be fitted with Alfa Laval Pure SOx system scrubbers serving both main and auxiliary engines.

Pulpca follows Trica in November, Kraftca in October and Genca in September and all came in after Timca was completed in July. She in turn was booked in after successful tests with the Alfa Laval scrubber equipment on sister Plyca in 2012.

Reports said the allocated yard installation time for each ship was only three weeks, so GDD personnel assembled components themselves on land and lifted completed modules onto the ships using the Bugsier floating crane Enak.

New managing director Guido Foersterling told The Motorship the decision to invest in scrubber installation had put German Dry Docks on a solid footing in three complementary sectors – docking and repair, naval repair and now the retrofitting of scrubber equipment. “Future prospects are good”, he said.

Mr Foersterling also said GDD was preparing a modernisation plan to make the site technologically state of the art and better able to offer good service and attractive cost-performance ratios.

Concentration on conversion at neighbouring Bremerhaven Shipyard Alliance partner LWB and on repairs and retro-fitting at GDD meant that each concern could focus on its core activities while benefitting from the synergies of a common working platform, Mr Foersterling told The Motorship.