Den Breejen News

River cruise ship Emerald Belle, due to be launched in April, has been seriously damaged in a shipyard fire in the Netherlands. The Emerald Waterways ship was under construction at the Den Breejen Shipyard in the Netherlands. "Despite the efforts of firefighters, who were quickly at the scene, the damage is significant," said Glen Moroney, chairman of the Scenic Group, parent of the Emerald Waterways (known in its native Australia as Evergreen Tours) line. Sister line, Scenic, also had a ship under construction nearby but it was quickly moved away so damage was contained to some exterior paint. The cruise line issued the following statement: “Although the Emerald Belle's construction was well along (as it was due to launch in April) the firefighting system onboard was not yet operational.

Van Oord’s flexible fallpipe vessel, Stornes, has recently been in Damen Shiprepair & Conversion Rotterdam for a scope of work which allows the vessel to operate at greater water depths in future. Stornes is a 175 m long, 26.24 m wide, DP2 vessel used for subsea rock installation to protect piping. Since her delivery to Van Oord in 2011, Stornes has mostly been installing rocks to water depths up to 800 metres. However, a contract awarded to the company in 2013 required the vessel to operate at 1,300 metres. After some minor modifications in 2014, the first phase of the contract was executed. Now, the vessel has received an upgrade to her rock-dumping tower, which enables an even better performance at these water depths.

On January 18th, 2013, Damen Shipyards Galaţi (Romenia) has launched the World Diamond, the first of a series of six fully equipped Platform Supply Vessels for Norwegian offshore company World Wide Supply. The PSV 3300 series is part of Damen´s newly designed range of platform suppliers. Like the other five ships, The World Diamond is built and completed in Galati in cooperation with Damen Shipyards Gorinchem (The Netherlands) which provides the design, engineering and main equipment.