San Giorgio News

Italian energy company Axpo has signed a 10-year deal to charter an LNG bunkering vessel which is expected to begin operations in 2025.The agreement has been signed with Italy’s Gas and Heat SpA and the San Giorgio del Porto shipyard. The vessel will be built in the San Giorgio’s shipyard in Piombino, Italy, and will have a capacity of up to 7,500 cubic metres. In the future, the ship could also transport bio-LNG and ammonia. Active off the coast of Naples, the vessel will provide ship-to-ship bunkering as well as ship-to-truck transfer of LNG to tanker trucks onshore…

The first steel cutting ceremony was held for the first of two LNG-powered ships for the cruise ship operator TUI Cruises.Shipbuilder Fincantieri said Wednesday that the construction start-up ceremony had taken place in the presence of Wybcke Meier, CEO of TUI, and Luigi Matarazzo, General Manager Merchant Ship Division of Fincantieri, in San Giorgio di Nogaro (Udine) at Centro Servizi Navali, a company specialized in logistics and production of sheet metal for the Fincantieri yards located in northeastern Italy.

Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri has cut first steel for the first of two LNG-powered cruise ships being built for Princess Cruises, a Carnival Corporation brand.The steel cutting ceremony took place last week in San Giorgio di Nogaro (Udine) at Centro Servizi Navali, a company that specialized in logistics and production of sheet metal for the Fincantieri yards located in northeastern Italy. The ship will be built in the Monfalcone yard.At 175,000 gross tons the “Sphere” vessels will be the largest ships built so far in Italy.

The hull of ultra-luxury expedition ship Seabourn Venture has been transferred from Trieste to Genoa, where the newbuild will undergo final outfitting ahead of its scheduled launch in December. The hull, with its superstructures built up to deck 9, was built at T. Mariotti and Cimolai's CIMAR shipyard in San Giorgio di Nogaro. The new ship was floated out in Trieste on March 30 and arrived in Genoa on April 10 following the 1,200 mile voyage.Already equipped with engines, generators and the main equipment of the engine room…

New work to overhaul engines on an offshore support vessel (OSV) operated by United Offshore Support (UOS), has been completed by Royston.Engineers undertook the 30,000 running hour service on the main propulsion engines onboard the GH Challenger, as part of an extensive refurbishment and maintenance program of critical power plants.The 2009-built, 80m length, 3000 tonne-vessel, which is part of a 11-strong fleet, currently operates in the Caribbean Sea, where it’s supporting…

Pursuant to the agreement signed last year between Fincantieri, the Liguria Region and the trade unions Cgil, Cisl and Uil, aimed at carrying out a series of initiatives to encourage job placement processes, the offer of the courses of the technical institutes of higher education for next autumn is to be extended.In fact, a new educational pathway meeting the employment needs of the shipbuilding sector will start in Liguria at the Accademia della Marina Mercantile (the Merchant Navy Academy). The Regional Council, following the proposal of the Councilor Cavo, has approved the scheduling of the post-high school diploma specialization course “Foreman for production and maintenance of ships and/or related infrastructures”…

Two Italian shipbuilders - Genova Industrie Navali (GIN), a holding company by two historic Genoese shipyards, T. Mariotti and San Giorgio del Porto, and Fincantieri -have reached a cooperation agreement covering different areas, from new buildings, to ship repair, conversions and outfitting.The agreement provides for the acquisition by Fincantieri of a minority stake in GIN Group’s holding company and an option for a minority stake in T. Mariotti.Fincantieri’s stake will allow GIN to achieve further financial strength, an increasingly important asset to face complex projects and to overcome market challenges, especially in the field of small and medium-sized luxury cruise ships construction.Incidentally,  T.

Costa Group – part of Carnival Corporation & plc, the world’s largest cruise company – announced that its new generation ships, the first LNG powered at sea, will call Marseille in 2019. The Costa Group, the leading tourism group, the No. 1 cruiser in Europe has renovated its commitment to Port of Marseille through different initiatives that began in 1996 when the new cruise called “La Dolce Vita” started its weekly operations from Marseille to offer the French guests every Saturday a brand new and unique experience in the best places of the Mediterranean onboard its ship Costa Romantica. This new offer launched by Costa contributed to the French people being more and more interested in experiencing a cruise vacation.

Two Albanian seamen were killed on Tuesday during the salvage of a multi-deck car ferry that caught fire off Greece's Adriatic Coast two days ago, killing at least 11 people, with dozens more missing. The men were killed when a cable connecting their tugboat to the smouldering hulk of the Norman Atlantic snapped and hit them, an Albanian port authority official and Italy's navy said. As salvage operations continued, there was confusion over the numbers on the ship, with dozens…

Rescue teams on Monday completed the evacuation of 427 people from a car ferry that caught fire off Greece's Adriatic coast, working through the night and defying high seas and freezing weather in a 36-hour drama. Eight people were killed in the incident and many others could be missing, prompting Italian authorities to continue an air search of the sea around the vessel while they sought to verify the number of passengers who had been on board. The fire broke out on a vehicle deck of the Norman Atlantic ferry…

Fire started in early hours of Sunday; rescue efforts hampered by bad weather. Five people were confirmed to have died in car ferry that caught fire off the coast of Greece and rescue teams were working to save another 22 still stranded on board more than 24 hours after the blaze started. As some of the rescued passengers arrived in Italy, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told reporters that four more bodies had been recovered. One man was reported dead on Sunday. Renzi, speaking at a year-end media conference in Rome, said that rescue efforts should be completed within a "few hours" and praised the work of rescuers, who had helped avoid a "massacre". The Norman Atlantic was carrying 478 passengers and crew and more than 200 vehicles.

The Marseilles Fos port authority said it is targeting mid-2015 to complete the €28 million renovation of its giant drydock 10 to provide a strategically located base for cruise ship repair and maintenance. At 465 meters long and 85 metrs wide - the third biggest in the world after Lisbon and Dubai – the drydock will offer a unique facility for the latest-generation fleet in the Mediterranean, where 65% of the world’s largest cruise vessels operate. These include ships of up to 360 meters that currently call at Marseilles.

The rusty hulk of the Costa Concordia began its journey to the scrapyard on Wednesday, after a two-year salvage operation off the Italian island where the cruise liner capsized two years ago, killing 32 people. Boats sounded horns and church bells rang as a tug boat slowly pulled the wreck of the liner, which was around two-and-a half times the size of the Titanic, away from the holiday island of Giglio, accompanied by a convoy of 14 vessels. Salvage workers gathered in bars at the port…

Maneouvres began early on Wednesday to remove the rusty hulk of the Costa Concordia cruise liner from the Italian island where it struck rocks and capsized two years ago, killing 32 people. A convoy of 14 vessels, led by the tug boat Blizzard, will start to tow the Concordia later on Wednesday to a port near Genoa in northern Italy where it is due to arrive on Sunday, before being broken up for scrap. Over the past week, salvagers have slowly lifted the 114,500-tonne ship from underwater platforms by pumping air into 30 large metal boxes, or sponsons, attached to the hull. Franco Porcellachia, engineer in charge of the salvage, said on Tuesday that his team had done everything in their power to make sure the ship…

The massive hulk of the Costa Concordia is nearly ready to be towed away from the Italian island where it struck a rock and capsized two-and-a-half years ago, killing 32 people, officials said on Sunday. The rusting prow of the once-gleaming white luxury liner was due to emerge fully from the water for the first time on Sunday, and the ship should be ready to tow on Monday, but the departure has been pushed back a day due to forecasts of rough seas. The 114,500-tonne Concordia has been slowly lifted from the sea floor since Monday, when salvagers began pumping air into 30 large metal boxes, or sponsons, attached around the hull. The air has forced water out of the sponsons…

The wreck of the luxury liner Costa Concordia was refloated on Monday and will soon be towed away and broken up for scrap, more than two years after it capsized off the Italian coast, killing 32 people. The 290-metre Costa Concordia ran aground on rocks near the Tuscan holiday island of Giglio in January 2012. The rusting hulk of the once gleaming-white ship had been resting on a temporary platform since being righted a year ago. In what has become one of the largest salvage operations in history, air was pumped into 30 large metal boxes, or sponsons, attached around the hull of the 114,500 tonne ship. The air forced out the water in the sponsons, lifting the vessel more than 2 metres off the underwater platform.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner is set to be refloated within 10 days, to be towed away from the Italian island where it ran aground and capsized two and a half years ago, the group organizing the removal said on Thursday. The hulk of the 290-meter ship was righted and secured in a complex operation off the Tuscan holiday island of Giglio last September and, with the arrival of calm summer weather, is now due to be towed to Genoa to be broken up for scrap. The last…

The bulk of the Costa Concordia cruise liner that capsised off the Tuscany coast in 2012, killing 32 people, will be demolished and scrapped in the port of Genoa, the Italian government decided on Monday. The decision for the work to be done in Genoa, in northern Italy, followed a choice last month by Costa Cruises for a consortium including oil services company Saipem and Genoa-based companies Mariotti and San Giorgio. A number of other ports in Italy and abroad had expressed interest in the contract.

Costa Cruises has chosen a consortium including oil service company Saipem to scrap the hulk of the Costa Concordia cruise liner which capsized off the Tuscany coast in 2012, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. The green light from the Italian government is still missing, the sources added. Besides Saipem the consortium includes Genoa-based companies Mariotti and San Giorgio, one of the sources said. Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp, and Saipem declined to comment. The luxury liner hit rocks more than two years ago as it sailed close to the island of Giglio, killing 32 people. Since then, it has been hauled upright but still rests where it capsized off the coast of the holiday island.   Reporting by Antonella Cinelli and Stephen Jewkes

Navy went to aid of 17 different vessels; Flow of boat migrants set to break 2011, Arab Spring record. Italy wants more EU help, UN intervention in Libya. Italy has rescued more than 2,500 men, women and children from overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily since early Thursday, the navy said, with good weather favouring departures from North Africa. Italian navy and coast guard ships monitoring the waters off the Libyan and Tunisian coasts went to the aid of 17 different boats over the period, the navy said on Friday morning, adding that rescue efforts are continuing. One ship, the San Giorgio, took aboard 998 migrants, including 214 women and 157 children, from five different vessels, the navy said in a statement.

In three weeks, the Costa Concordia wreck will be towed to Genoa for demolition and recycling. At the end of the Conferenza dei Servizi meeting held yesterday, June 25, in Rome, Costa Crociere reaffirmed the motivations for the choice of the transportation of the Concordia wreck in Genoa for its dismantling and recycling, stating Genoa is the only Italian port in which demolition and recycling activities can start immediately and count on the best possible technologies and environmental safety standards.

Naval Sea Systems Command completed the installation of new control systems aboard USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20), April 8, which will reduce fuel usage and crew workload. Engineers from the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division - Ship Systems Engineering Station (NSWCCD-SSES) SSES installed the new control systems on a number of shipboard engineering components and are specifically designed to improve automation on the optimally manned ships. “Military Sealift Command-operated ships like the Mount Whitney traditionally have lower manning levels, therefore being able to operate many systems from one central control unit is essential,” said Matthew Douglass, Auxiliary Machinery Automation Branch head.

Following a call for tenders in November last year, the Marseilles Fos port authority has chosen automotive logistics specialist TEA – part of the Charles Andre transport group - to develop and operate an import/export terminal for new cars at the Brule-Tabac quay in Fos. The decision was announced during a review of the port’s first five years under a revised management structure decreed by the French government in 2008. This established three governing bodies – the executive, supervisory and development boards – which are about to be renewed after completing their 2009-2013 terms of office.