Edinburgh Dock News

A new milestone has been achieved by the Harris Pye Group (HPG), vessels have been in both the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince of Wales dry docks in Swansea simultaneously – a first for the Group which signed a longer lease on the dry docks in April 2010 following the departure of Saga Pearl II which had been refurbished and refitted at the docks. The two vessels are Visten and Welsh Piper. The dredger, Welsh Piper, has now left having had her biannual special service, and undergone pipe replacement and steelwork (some 20 tonnes of steel were used in all). The Visten remains, she is owned by Canada’s CAI Logistics and is a tanker being converted into a bulk carrier. Work being undertaken includes the installation of two cargo cranes and the redesign of the hatch cover arrangement.

Following the successful use of Swansea Dry Docks for the refit and refurbishment of Saga Pearl II, now successfully cruising; work on MV Julia, now plying the Fastnet Ferry Cork-Swansea overnight route; and emergency repair work on the 213.2 ft hopper dredger Heron, Harris Pye Group (HPG) has signed a longer lease on Swansea’s Duke of Edinburgh and Prince of Wales dry docks – a move that is attracting interest from a number of shipping lines. “We are very much ‘open for business’, indeed we dealt with the requirements of UKD Dredging’s Dolphin at the start of May” said the Group’s Managing Director, Mark Prendergast. “We invested heavily…