Unicom News

Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades has expressed his government’s determination to protect and further develop the shipping sector as per report in Financial Mirror. The industry employs 4,500 people on the island and Cyprus-based shipmanagement companies manage about 20% of the world’s third-party fleet. The industry currently contributes 7% to the island’s GDP, and with the launch of a new maritime strategy, Anastasiades believes maritime will “contribute significantly”, saying that he is devoted to “safeguarding the sector”. President Anastasiades added that despite the international adverse economic conditions and the financial difficulties that our country faces in the last years…

PAO Sovcomflot (“SCF Group”), Russia’s largest shipping company and a global leader in seaborne energy transportation and offshore services, announced the completion of a major IT integration project with the support of SpecTec. The project provides SCF Group with access to the latest enterprise management systems, enabling organizational efficiency to be improved, costs to be reduced and facilitating compliance with the latest regulations impacting upon shipping companies. One of the most complex and advanced IT projects ever undertaken within the shipping industry, this project involved the databases of all 143 vessels within SCF Group’s fleet. Each deliverable under the project having to be deployed successfully on each of the Group’s vessels, requiring great attention to detail.

Korean Telecommunications provider KT has been named the key operator of the world's largest submarine network cable, New Cross Pacific (NCP). Korea's dominant fixed-line operator said it will run a network center to control the submarine cable which helps connect network systems in Asia-Pacific countries to the North American region. The company said it will start operation of the 14,000-kilometer-long NCP cable in December 2017. The purpose of the NCP Project is to form a submarine cable network with a data processing capacity of about 80 Tbps across the Pacific Ocean. "KT will play a central role as a global traffic hub with a network operation center (NOC) in Busan," Korea Times quoted Oh Seong-mok, executive vice president of KT's network division, as saying.

China is building its first international undersea cable that will carry information and data flow between the country and the ASEAN nations, says Xinhuanet. Its also setting up Information Harbor for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The government run China Unicom, one of the main telecommunications providers in the country, is cooperating with Myanmar's telecommunications operators to build the underwater cable, said Jiang Zhengxin, vice general manager of China United Telecommunications Corp, parent of China Unicom. China first proposed the Information Harbor initiative in September 2014. The initiative will include five cooperative platforms to benefit China and ASEAN members…

Ecochlor, Inc. announced that Unicom Management Services (Cyprus) Ltd. (Unicom), acting for SCF Group, signed a 10-vessel agreement for the Ecochlor Ballast Water Treatment System (BWTS) in Limassol, Cyprus on May 6, 2015.   The agreement will see the Ecochlor BWTS retrofitted on 10 oil and/or chemical tankers from the fleets controlled by Unicom or Novoship Technical Management, both part of the SCF Group.   Unicom Management Services (Cyprus) Ltd. has been investigating ballast water treatment (BWT) systems for over two years and placed a high priority on a system that is highly effective, has low power requirements, and is on the path to achieving United States Coast Guard (USCG) Type Approval. Unicom selected the Ecochlor BWTS, which meets all of these requirements.

Thomas Gunn Navigation Services won a new contract by Unicom to supply an additional 43 vessels with its outfit management service. Thomas Gunn now supplies navigation solutions to 78 vessels, the bulk of the Unicom fleet. “We value the strong business relationship we have built up with Unicom over a number of years,” says Thomas Gunn, founder and Managing Director of Thomas Gunn Navigation Services. Thomas Gunn will supply the Unicom fleet with both Russian Hydrographic Office and UK Hydrographic Office charts and publications…

ClassNK opened its first exclusive surveyor office in St. Petersburg on September 14 with a lively reception hosted by ClassNK Chairman and President and Current IACS Vice-Chairman Noboru Ueda. The event was attended by more than 80 guests including executives and representatives from throughout the Russian maritime industry. Among the many prominent dignitaries at the event were His Excellency Ichiro Kawabata, Consul General of Japan in St. Petersburg, IACS Council Chairman Pavel Shikhov, Vladimir Alexandrov, President of the St. Petersburg Shipbuilders Association, and numerous top representatives from academic institutions such as CNIIMF.

On Monday, January 18, 2010, Donjon-SMIT, LLC, an OPA-90 Alliance, was notified by QI Gallagher Marine Services that a vessel required emergency towing assistance. The Tavricheski Bridge, managed by UNICOM Ship Management, had broken a main engine camshaft and lost main propulsion 160 miles Southeast of Nantucket in the North Atlantic. The Tavricheski Bridge, a 50,300 GT tanker, was carrying 32,500 MTs of Naptha. The weather was calm with no significant storms in the area expected within 48 to 72 hours. On January 19, the Donjon Marine Co., Inc.

Applied Weather Technology, Inc. (AWT) announced that Unicom Management Services (Cyprus) Ltd has now been using its BonVoyage software (BVS) for 10 years to help its ship Captains steer clear of heavy weather in order to avoid vessel damage and prevent crew injury. After first adopting BVS in 1999 as part of a trial on three ships, SCF Unicom observed that the onboard software was helping its Captains to reduce heavy weather damage to those ships. The company then quickly expanded use of BVS to approximately 17 ships within its managed fleet…

In a move that is likely to increase repairs of U.S.-flagged ships at Bahrain’s ASRY, the Bahraini Government has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Government to designate Bahrain as a ‘home port’ for U.S. ships. ASRY has been repairing U.S. Navy and MSC ships for a number of years, especially during the Kuwait and Iraq Wars. On the commercial side, ASRY has also been carrying out emergency repairs to U.S.-flagged ships. However, under this new agreement, U.S.-flagged commercial vessels can now repair in ASRY without paying the 50% levy to the U.S. Government by repairing overseas. Bahrain is the only major Gulf shiprepair country to enter into this agreement with the U.S. Authorities.

Marc D. Bumgarner has joined Matson Intermodal System in Oakbrook Terrace as vice president, International. In this position, Bumgarner will be responsible for Matson Intermodals’ entire international business sector, including current customers and strategic growth opportunities. Bumgarner comes to Matson Intermodal with over a decade of intermodal marketing experience. He has held director posts at Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, with an emphasis on sales, marketing and pricing. Most recently, he was vice president, pricing and schedules, for Webmodal, a business-to-buisness web-based platform for the purchase of freight transportation. Bumgarner was one of the seven founding members of the ocmpany’s management team.

Following on from the earlier success of the first half of this year, Bahrain’s ASRY, has turned in a successful third quarter series of results with an increase in business and sales, which were up some 7% on the previous quarter. In all some 28 vessels were in the yard for repairs and refurbishment, with 30 percent being in the tanker class with the majority being ULCCs and VLCCs. The yard was also kept extremely busy with other classes of vessels ranging from lpg carriers, livestock carriers through to RoRos, dredgers and general cargo. During this third quarter over a hundred specifications were received from owners around the world with a contact award success rate of 26%.

tankers in the P-MAX series – was named today. be held at Brodosplit Shipyard out-side Split. from e.g. the US. company Sovcomflot. The master of the Stena President is Yashin Yuriy. together with Hans Norén, President of Concordia Maritime, and Ulf G. Ryder, President and CEO of Stena Bulk. represented by its president, Domagoj Klaric. delivered in the third quarter. in 2006, was also signed to a 10-year charter with Argo Shipping. tenth unit is planned for 2010.

Concordia Maritime’s product tanker Stena President – the fifth of ten tankers in the P-MAX series – will be named today. The naming ceremony will be held at Brodosplit Shipyard out-side Split. After delivery, the tanker will enter a 10-year charter with Argo Shipping and transport oil from e.g. ports in the Baltic Sea and around the White Sea to Europe and the US. The tanker’s godmother will be Nataliya Popravko, wife of Sergey Popravko, the President of Unicom Management Services and COO of the Russian shipping company Sovcomflot. The master of the Stena President is Yashin Yuriy. The Stena President was launched in the second quarter of 2007 and will be delivered in the third quarter.

Unicom Management Services (Cyprus) Ltd., the ship management arm of Russian national shipowner Sovcomflot, became the first tanker operator to sign up multiple ships to Lloyd’s Register’s new Hull Integrity service. Unicom has enrolled 17 of its tankers in Hull Integrity, from its Bridge class and Sea class fleets. Both series of ships are 47,000 dwt product and chemical carriers. The deal was sealed following the launch of Hull Integrity at the Posidonia exhibition in Piraeus, Greece in June. Hull Integrity aims to help owners and operators to manage their vessels’ hull structural integrity. The service comprises of three elements which enable a ship’s crew to undertake hull inspections in a systematic and auditable manner: training in how to carry out inspections…