Hatlapa’s Strongest Winch
The UOS Atlantis was the first vessel out of a series of twelve Anchor Handling Vessel – built by Fincantieri for Hartmann Offshore – to be fitted out with Hatlapa‘s anchor handling and associated winches. It has been operating off the coast of Egypt for BP since March. The remaining ships will all be delivered by mid 2010. The German based marine equipment supplier will also supply a range of additional deck machinery to these 12 vessels. Hatlapa,
At the heart of this contract is a 260 t anchor winch, with a pulling power of up to 450 t and a holding power of 550 t. “This is our strongest winch to date”, explained Hatlapa’s Product Development Manager, Christian Herzog, “However, this will not be the end of our development of our range of anchor handling winches. We are currently building a winch with a pulling power of 500 t.” Frank Witt, a Service team member directly involved with the operation of this installation commented “It was an incredibly proud moment, seeing this 6m high winch with its four hydraulic motors operating exactly as we had designed it. At full power, 1200 m from the coast of Italy, the vessel was unable to move even a meter forward during the pull test. Our winch, which had a 80 mm thick steel rope, was fixed to land and it held the vessel tight. This resulted in a pulling power of 196 t, exactly as required.”
The contract reinforces Hatlapa’s strong position in this market sector and is an additional product line to its standard winches, compressors and steering gears. Joint-MD Joerg Tollmien says “Involvement in this market sector makes us less reliant on the enormous market fluctuations in the standard commercial marine market . “We want to increase our market share within this product. Hatlapa is now in a position to produce large winches for the offshore oil industry.”