Having compiled a summary of its worldwide shipbuilding activities regarding Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs), Damen Shipyards Group, with five vessels delivered in the last year and 15 currently under construction, claims unrivalled experience in serving the naval industry with its OPV portfolio. In addition to its own builds, the company says it is just as capable of completing complex naval projects in cooperation with local shipyards as it is in constructing vessels at its own yards. “OPVs are playing an increasingly significant role in modern naval operations.

Hunter Marine's Operations Division has selected MarineCFO’s Vessel 365 fleet optimization technology, along with Endurance Personnel for managing time cards, scheduling and personnel reporting functions, and Endurance Maintenance, a complete maintenance solution from scheduling, outside services and capacity planning to quality control. Darrick Lee, Hunter Marine Purchasing Manager said the company will use MarineCFO's suite of products to achieve Subchapter M compliance and to help streamline existing business processes.

Damen Shipyards Group said it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Delo Group of companies, establishing plans to open a service hub in the Russian port of Novorossiysk. According to Damen, the new hub will aim to optimize the services provided to the growing number of Damen vessels operating in the region in addition to strengthening its relationship with the Delo Group. The LOI was signed by representatives from the two companies during the NEVA 2017 trade fair in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Florida based naval architecture and marine engineering firm Boksa Marine Design said it has kept bust over the past few months, with many of its 2017 projects having progressed from design and engineering phases on some and build-to-water on others. Boska provided an update on several of those projects. J&M Metalworks of Green Cove Springs, Fla. has been working on the initial phases of construction of a 140’ passenger vessel. The vessel was designed by DeJong and Lebet, Naval Architects of Jacksonville, Fla..

A Panama flagged bulk carrier, DL Carnation, has been banned from entering Australian ports for a period of 12 months after authorities uncovered a scheme which saw the vessel’s crew being intentionally underpaid. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it received a complaint on Friday, September 8 via the International Transport Workers’ Federation alleging discrepancies in the payment of wages for the crew of the DL Carnation. An AMSA surveyor attended the vessel in Gladstone and found that the ship was operating with two sets of wage accounts on board: one showing the amount of pay the crew should have been receiving in line with their Seafarer Employment Agreements, and the other showing what the crew was actually receiving.

The HARRIER is still under arrest in Norway after its owners failed to illegally set sail for the dangerous and dirty scrapping yards in Gadani, Pakistan, last February. The owners are now forced to find a safe and environmentally sound recycling destination. In parallel, investigations are still ongoing following the charges pressed by the Norwegian environmental authorities against the owners of the TIDE CARRIER for having attempted to breach existing waste trade laws. At the edge of bankruptcy…

Scorpio Tankers sold and leased back, on a bareboat basis, three 2013 built MR product tankers, STI Beryl, STI Le Rocher and STI Larvotto to Bank of Communications Financial Leasing in April 2017. The sales price was $29 million per vessel and the company bareboat chartered-in the vessels for a period of up to eight years at $8,800 per day per vessel. The international provider in the transportation for refined petroleum products has the option to purchase these vessels beginning at the end of the fifth year of the agreements through the end of the eighth year of the agreements.

Satellite AIS data services provider exactEarth Ltd. announced that its exactTrax small vessel monitoring technology is now incorporated into Alltek Marine Electronic Corp’s (AMEC) AIS Tracking Beacon (TB560). The AMEC TB560 is a simplified Class B AIS device that offers an efficient and cost-effective vessel monitoring solution within AIS VHF transmission range. Now outfitted with exactTrax technology from exactEarth, which extends small vessel tracking beyond traditional coastal surveillance, the AMEC TB560 can reliably be detected from space. exactTrax allows for the secure transmission and reliable detection of signals from the millions of artisanal and small-scale commercial fishing boats and small commercial work boats currently operating around the world.

Dubai-based Topaz Energy and Marine has signed an agreement with Orange Business Services for a Maritime Connect solution that connects its fleet at sea and supports the corporate network. Topaz is an offshore support vessel company for the global energy industry. The Orange integrated communications platform increases the efficiency of the fleet, lowers cost and improves the onboard experience for crew. Under a three-year agreement Orange is initially connecting 39 vessels from the Topaz fleet…

Louisiana shipbuilder Conrad Shipyard said it has been awarded a contract to build two 3,000HP ocean service tugboats for Seattle’s Harley Marine Services. The two new vessels, designed by Entech Designs, LLC, will be 100-feet in length, with a beam of 34’. They will be powered by Caterpillar 3512C Tier 4 ARated Diesel Marine Engines, and equipped with two Caterpillar C4.4 99Kw at 1,800RPM generators. The two vessels are scheduled to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2018 and first quarter of 2019 respectively.

The Operational and Maintenance departments of Antwerp Port Authority will shortly be merged to form a "Nautical & technical cluster." The new entity will have two floating dry docks at quay 602-612 for repairing its own fleet. This will put an end to the "fixed docks" on Dry Dock Island where the first facility was built in 1861. The new dry docks will be able to take vessels from 1500 to 1750 tonnes, with a width of up to 23 m and a draught of up to 7 m, and will be equipped with a crane with a lifting capacity of 10 tonnes.

The U.S. Coast Guard has awarded Eastern Shipbuilding Group (ESG) a Long Lead Time Material (LLTM) contract for the first Offshore Patrol Cutter, USCGC Argus (WMSM 915). The LLTM contract awarded on September 7, 2017 allows Eastern to move forward on an aggressive schedule to deliver a capable and affordable platform to meet the Coast Guard’s mission needs. The award includes main propulsion, machinery control, electrical and mechanical equipment orders that need to be placed…

If you are an American thinking Asia for converting a vessel, building a drydock or contracting a medium-sized newbuild, then Krzysztof Kozdron, Managing Director of Germany-based Schulte Marine Concept (SMC), is the man you need to speak to. Easy to talk to, the Shanghai-based naval architect and engineer knows shipbuilding from all sides. Parent company Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) has owned and operated ships for 150 years, and he draws on that and his own 25 years of project experience.

The Baltic Exchange's main sea freight index, tracking rates for ships carrying dry bulk commodities, inched higher on Monday, hitting a fresh nearly three-year high as rates for panamaxes and smaller vessels increased. The overall index, which factors in rates for capesize, panamax, supramax and handysize shipping vessels, rose 13 points, or 0.94 percent, to 1,398 points, the highest since Nov. 10, 2014. However, the capesize index slipped 4 points, or 0.15 percent, to 2,681 points.

Euroseas announced that it signed a memorandum of agreement to purchase the M/V EM Athens and EM Oinousses, both feeder size containership vessels of 2,506 teu built in 2000. The Company also announced that it acquired the option to purchase from Euromar two additional container vessels, the M/V EM Corfu, a feeder size containership vessel of 2,556 teu built in 2001, and the M/V Akinada Bridge, a post-panamax size container vessel of 5,600 teu built in 2001 until September 30, 2017.

Phillips 66 has chartered a Marshall Islands-flagged vessel, making use of a temporary waiver of the Jones Act that was put in place to meet fuel shortages in the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Argus Media reported on Thursday. The vessel, Nave Jupiter, departed from Houston, Texas on Sept. 9, and was docked near the company's Alliance refinery in Louisiana, the report said. The nearly 100 year-old law mandates the use of U.S.-flagged vessels to transport merchandise between U.S. coasts. Last week, the U.S. Homeland Security Department had waived the law for a week, the first such waiver since December 2012 after Hurricane Sandy. The department said earlier this week that it was extending the temporary waiver until Sept. 22.

Wärtsilä informs it has tested its automatic wireless induction charging system on a hybrid powered commercial coastal ferry, the first in the world operating with high power wireless charging capability for its batteries. The tests were carried out in Norwegian during the end of August and early September on the 85 meter long MF Folgefonn owned by Norled, one of Norway's largest ferry operators waters. The project, partially funded by Innovation Norway, represents a breakthrough in the evolution of plug-in electrically operated vessels, Wärtsilä said.

In an effort to go green amid looming strict emission rules, South Korea will launch a pilot program to build the world's largest vessel powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), reports Yonhap. South Korean Ministry of  Oceans and Fisheries  said it will join forces with local shipyards, builders and state institutes to develop a class of 180,000-ton LNG-propelled vessels. The government launched a task force in January made up of local companies to develop the emerging marine transport sector to comply with the International Maritime Organization's sulfur cap on bunkers…

A keel laying ceremony held on September 7, 2017 at Colombo Dockyard PLC in Sri Lanka signaled the start of construction on a new cable lay vessel for Japanese owner Kokusai Cable Ship Co. Ltd (KCS). Vard Design secured the ship design contract with builder Colombo Dockyard for KCS’s newest vessel, a VARD 9 01 design tailor-made for installation and repair of subsea telecom cables, with a high capacity below-deck cable carousel. Developed in close cooperation with the ship owner…

Eighteen Jones Act petroleum vessels owned and/or operated by Crowley Maritime Corp. have been loaded to discharge gasoline and diesel into Florida ports in the coming few days. The mobilization responds to fuel shortages caused by the unprecedented evacuation of millions of Floridians ahead of Hurricane Irma. The vessels include Crowley’s MT Ohio and Florida, which were among the first tankers to bring fuel into the Port of Tampa on Tuesday along with MT West Virginia in Port Everglades. Fuel is being discharged to all of the major terminals in Florida – Jacksonville, Port Canaveral and Ft.

Shipyards in China have surpassed  South Korea again in terms of receiving the most orders for new ships and platforms, while fierce battle for the number one position in shipbuilding orders continues. China ranked first globally with 195 vessel orders, while South Korea was second with 104 during the first eight months of this year, Yicai Global reported citing Clarkson Research Services. According to the report, total global orders for January to August were 489 vessels, up about 40 percent annually.

Sentinel Marine’s latest new-build emergency response and rescue vessel (ERRV) has been deployed to service in the North Sea after being christened at Aberdeen Harbor. The new vessel, Mariner Sentinel, is operating on behalf of Statoil at its Mariner field to the east of Shetland – the sixth of nine vessels to join the firm’s fleet since 2015. Statoil’s Aberdeen-based offshore logistics and services supervisor, Line Kaldestad, officially named Mariner Sentinel in her role as the ship’s godmother.

DryShips, a diversified owner of ocean going cargo vessels, announced today that, its second Very Large Gas Carrier commenced its time charter on a fixed rate with five years firm duration to an oil major. The charterer has options to extend the firm employment period by up to three years. The Company expects a total gross backlog associated with this time charter of up to USD 92.7 million including the optional periods. Five days ago, DryShips announced that it has taken delivery of the previously announced high specifications second newbuilding VLGC.