Mooring Safety Improved at Port Taranaki

Scotload, part of James Fisher and Sons plc, has designed and delivered a solution for the monitoring of mooring line stresses at Port Taranaki, a deepwater port in New Zealand. The company said it utilized its SmartLoad 2Ex technology for Zone 2 hazardous areas to improve safety and significantly reduce the risk of mooring incidents.

Port Taranaki has a long history of mooring difficulties and experiences long period waves (LPW) which excites the motion of moored vessels, increasing the loadings and the possibility of breaking the mooring lines. Together with MetOcean Solutions Limited - a local oceanographic company, the port has developed a predictive model in calculating the loadings during LPW, but as the effect is different for every berth, data is required to calibrate calculations for loading events.

To help ensure the integrity of the mooring lines and continuously monitor the load, Scotload applied its knowledge of load monitoring solutions to replicate the pins in the port’s existing boss mooring links and incorporate its SmartLoad technology, which includes load intelligence directly on the mooring links, to deliver accurate load monitoring results in real-time.

“Ships in Port Taranaki are subject to long period wave surge,” explianed Peter Atkinson, port planning manager at Port Taranaki. “Predictive models are used to forecast events but we wanted to increase efforts in better managing our response to these events. One of the parameters by which we are monitoring moored vessels is the mooring line tension which is why we approached Scotload, for their expertise in this field.”

The newly developed load monitoring boss mooring links now store mooring line tension data directly on the links themselves and export it for input into the predictive model. The adapted links were also supplied with a SmartLoad 2Ex handset and standard SmartLoad software.

Alex Cafferty of Kotimana Solutions Limited, Scotload’s agent for the region said, “This is a great example of how we can apply the innovative SmartLoad technology with any product, to be used with any combination of handset and software. The success of this installation has led to interest from other ports across New Zealand and I am very excited about the wider application into ports wanting to increase the safety of loading events worldwide.”

Simon Everett, managing director at Scotload concluded, “That we were able to devise a solution to Port Taranaki’s specific requirements and provide accurate mooring line tension data for their predictive model, which feeds into the harbour safety system that they are renowned for, is testament to the teams expertise in the field of load monitoring and the versatility of our SmartLoad technology.”