Oldenburg News

One of the world's biggest container ships, the Mumbai Maersk, has run aground off the German island of Wangerooge in the North Sea, Germany's Central Command for Maritime Emergencies and Maersk said on Thursday.No injuries were reported among the 30 people on board, no fuel leak sighted and the entrance to the port is not obstructed, they said in a statement.Maritime transport accounts for 80%-90% of all global trade and Mumbai Maersk belongs to a class of very large ships that can carry over 18,000 twenty-foot (33 cbm) equivalent containers holding furniture, vehicles, textiles and other export goods.A first attempt to tow the 400-meter ship into deeper water on Thursday morning by two multi-purpose vessels and five tugs failed.

A new tank concept for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and carbon dioxide (CO2) transportation promises to more than double current vessel cargo capacity, representing a step forward in the development of maritime transport solutions for the expanding carbon capture and storage (CCS) market, which will require maritime transport of liquefied CO2 to scale up rapidly. The new design, which is based on existing, proven technology, has been developed by automation, gas and system integration specialist…

German logistics and transportation company Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) and its partners began research and development work on the publicly funded FRESH  project at its Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA).FRESH stands for flexibility management and control reserve provision of heavy goods vehicles in the harbour, said the firm which operates three container terminals at the Port of Hamburg: Altenwerder, Burchardkai and Tollerort, as well as cargo handling and transport services by rail, road and sea.The goal is to integrate the battery capacities of the automated guided container transport vehicles (AGVs) that are in use…

Marine ecosystems provide us with food and raw materials, they have an impact on air quality and global climate, they break down harmful substances and serve as places of recreation and tourism. The functioning of these ecosystems – and thus also the basis for human well-being – depends on the biological diversity of the oceans. The way climate change and human influences change marine biodiversity will in future be examined by scientists in a new institute: as was recently decided by the senate of the Helmholtz Association, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity will be set up next year in Oldenburg. The new institute will pool and expand the research excellence in this field of the University of Oldenburg and the Alfred Wegener Institute…

Research vessel Falkor leaves Darwin today to explore the poorly understood air-sea interactions across the Indian and Pacific Ocean. This research is very important in understanding the ocean’s role in global climate change. The exchange of energy and matter between the atmosphere and the ocean are particularly onerous requirements, and have largely been neglected in climate research. Chief Scientist Dr. Oliver Wurl, from the University of Oldenburg and his international team of scientists from Germany, the United States, and United Kingdom plan to gain new insight during this 31-day expedition. The team of sea surface experts and marine geochemists on the expedition will use newly developed technologies to closely examine the ocean’s role in exchange processes.

J.F. Lehman & Company (JFLCO) informs it has signed a definitive agreement with Oldenburg Group Incorporated to acquire its Heavy Equipment Group, including both its defense and mining business units. The new company will be named Lake Shore Systems, Inc., in a return to its roots dating back to 1858. The acquisition will represent JFLCO’s 25th sponsored platform investment since the firm’s inception. Lake Shore designs, engineers, manufactures and supports complex, heavy equipment systems to meet mission critical requirements in harsh operating environments, including large deck handling equipment, access and lifting systems for U.S. government vessels and customized underground mining equipment for mine owners and operators around the world.

While the term ‘pioneer’ is oftentimes loosely bandied about, there is no more accurate term to describe Jochen Deerberg, an environmental pioneer of the maritime industry, founder of Oldenburg, Germany-based Deerberg-Systems, who was recently feted by cruise industry luminaries at his farewell dinner late last year. “To start in 1979 one could see that environmental-waste management problems on shore and especially in the maritime industry would be of great importance in the future,” said Deerberg. “Of course, I was 10 years too early with my idea.

A three-year EU-funded project, CASCADe, has developed new methodologies in which information is shared and displayed on a ship’s bridge, helping to improve efficiency on board and contribute toward the prevention of accidents at sea. Drawing directly from the experience of seafarers, CASCADe has developed a new adaptive bridge design methodology that treats both human agents and electronic equipment as parts of a cooperative system. This allows for the sharing of information to be optimized. In addition, CASCADe has developed a set of adaptive bridge displays.

Melting glaciers are causing a loss of species diversity among benthos in the coastal waters off the Antarctic Peninsula, impacting an entire seafloor ecosystem. This has been verified in the course of repeated research dives, the results of which were recently published by experts from Argentina, Germany and Great Britain and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in a study in the journal Science Advances. The scientists believe increased levels of suspended sediment in the water to be the cause of the dwindling biodiversity in the coastal region. This occurs when the effects of global warming lead glaciers near the coast to begin melting, as a result of which large quantities of sediment are carried into the seawater.

7 July 2015. A quarter of a century old, with over 900,000 kilometres (488,842 nautical miles) logged and still on the cutting edge of science and technology: 8 July 2015 will mark the Research Vessel Heincke’s 25th “birthday”. Staff from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which operates the Heincke, take part in expeditions with the ship just as often as fellow researchers and students from Germany and abroad. Back in 1990, when Federal Minister of Research Prof Heinz Riesenhuber dedicated the Heincke to the pursuit of scientific research, he would never have imagined that it would be operating today with a particle filter and downstream aftertreatment system.

The CMA CGM Group has acquired the German shipping company Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Rhederei GmbH & Co. KG (OPDR), CMA CGM founder, chairman and CEO Jacques R. Saadé announced during his visit in Hamburg, Germany on November 25. The closing of the transaction remains subject to the approval of the relevant regulatory authorities. OPDR, a shipping company owned by the Bernhard Schulte Group, specializes in short sea shipping and door-to-door logistics for North Europe, Canary Islands, the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco.

Ten battery-operated heavy goods vehicles now transport containers between ships and the yard at the highly automated handling facility in the HHLA Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA). The aim is to charge the batteries of these container transporters when the grid has a surplus of renewable energy generated in northern Germany. The first battery-powered heavy goods vehicles in the world went into use at the HHLA Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) back in 2011. Now, a project is bringing together businesses and research institutions that are keen to find out how the batteries for these automated guided vehicles (AGVs) can be charged using surplus green power generated in northern Germany.

Germanischer Lloyd's traditional recap of the latest session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of International Maritime Organization (IMO), focused on the surprising developments at the 65th session. MPEC 65, held in London in May, saw the IMO potentially postpone the introduction of the TIER III NOx limits contained in regulation 13 of MARPOL Annex VI, scheduled to come into effect in 2016, to 2021. Apart from the turn around on NOx, the 65th Session saw adjustments to the compliance timeline for the Ballast Water Convention (BWC)…

While the Integrated Bridge increasingly plays a bigger role in various shipbuilding programs, in many cases the degree of integration can be limited and does not allows a fully functional integration of different navigation systems or further ship systems on the bridge. In tandem there has been an increasing demand for higher level integrated bridge systems, which was reasonably driven by more sophisticated and safety-sensitive vessels such as cruise ships, specialized vessels and few oil tankers.

Almost 80% of collisions and groundings occur due to a failure of bridge systems and their usage. A new three-year European research project, part funded by the EU has been launched to help increase safety onboard vessels. CASCADe, (model-based Cooperative and Adaptive ship-based Context Aware Design) aims to address the lack of symbiosis which exists between current bridge design, operational procedures and the end user. In the maritime environment there is a proliferation of increasingly complex technology. Studies have shown that the use of instruments with a range of different user interfaces or the provision of too much information can lead to errors and a reduction in performance.

According to a Jan. 14 report from the Pierce County Herald a Milwaukee firm will get over $200m to provide material handling systems for the new U.S. Navy ships to be built in Marinette and Alabama. The Oldenburg Group said it would build cranes, launching systems, lift-platforms, and hatch covers for the 55 littoral combat ships recently approved by Congress. (Source: Pierce County Herald)

At the Rudolf Schepers shipping line based in Elsfleth in the Oldenburg region, shipping is a business with traditions. While the owners' grandfather sailed on inland waterways, 50 years ago their capacity was expanded by the addition of some coastal motor vessels up to 150 tons. Since the 70s, the company's core competence has become the worldwide chartering of container ships to big shippers like Maersk or CSAV. The cargo space is made available and the ships have been subjected to technical refits and the crews increased. Together with the Heinrich Schepers company within the same line, the family concern now operates 12 container vessels of 1,100 to 2,500 TEU. "Our ships are everywhere. North and South America…South Africa…the Near East…the Caribbean.