Delivering New Built Vessel
On 8 January, Lloyd Werft, Germany delivered MS ‘Combi Dock IV’ as the fourth and last newbuilt vessel for K/S Combi Lift. MS ‘Combi Dock IV’ represents the completion of the cooperation between the Danish/German joint venture Combi Lift – a joint venture of the shipping companies J. Poulsen Shipping A/S (Korsør) and Harren & Partner (Bremen) – and the Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven GmbH. “This was a wonderful example of cooperation, which we would not have missed for anything, and which we will hopefully be able to continue,” was the conclusion for Lloyd Werft drawn by Managing Director Rüdiger Pallentin, who added with great satisfaction that to date all three of the specialized vessels delivered since 22 December 2007 had performed ‘faultlessly and without a hitch’ on the international markets.
For the Combi Dock series, Lloyd Werft focussed again on ship completion, thus following an approach that has proven its worth over the years. It arranged for all four hulls to be built at the Crist yard in Gdansk, Poland, then completed the fittings in Bremerhaven – adhering to the principle, which will hold especially true in the future, that Lloyd Werft will not and does not intend to be a newbuilding shipyard. That the often praised flexibility of Lloyd Werft was demanded most of all for the Combi Dock series was also demonstrated during the construction of ‘Combi Dock II’. As it was being built in 2008, the ‘standard’ dock ship in this series unexpectedly became a very specialized and complex offshore vessel for deployment in the Gulf of Mexico. Combi Lift entered into a long-term charter agreement with Mexican partners.
In addition to the Combi Dock features, the vessel was outfitted with a helicopter platform on the fore ship, a moon pool for diving missions, housing containers on the deck as well as specialized equipment for off-shore missions, and was ready to be named as MS Blue Giant on 1 August 2008. To quote Lloyd Werft Managing Director Werner Lüken: “A newbuilding shipyard could not have demonstrated such flexibility in so short a time.” In Bremerhaven, critical elements of the building design were “completely turned inside out for offshore missions,” noted Rüdiger Pallentin, praising the work of his colleagues and the cooperation with the shipping company owners.
Combi Lift will use the newly built vessels ‘Combi Dock I’, ‘Combi Dock II’, ‘Combi Dock III’ and now ‘Combi Dock IV’ to extend its dominant position in the area of universally deployable ships for high-standard project cargo shipping – a concept that was developed by Harren & Partner and successfully implemented together with Lloyd Werft. With the four newly built vessels, Combi Lift makes a particular mark on the world-wide project market, in which there were no ships with a performance profile that could compare to that of the Combi Dock series. This also applies, above all, to the Heavy Lift market with its high-performance requirements.
The new design concept allows the dock ships not only to accommodate complete ships up to a draft of 4.50m and a length of 130m on the flush deck in lowered position, but also extremely heavy cargo. The trump card of the new specialized vessels is their versatility, which is enhanced by two high-performance cranes that are capable of lifting up to 700 TS when used in a tandem operation. In addition, a third cargo crane can lift another 200 TS. The stern ramp of the Combi vessels is also built for extremely high loads, capable of withstanding weights of up to 700 tons to be driven over it. This also created a requirement for the semi-submersible cargo deck to withstand a load of 16 TS per M2.
With the delivery of ‘Combi Dock IV’, Lloyd Werft also demonstrates above all, that the market for specialized vessels, with the most sophisticated technical requirements, remains a trump card that it continues to hold as one of the world’s leading shipbuilders. In combination with flexibility, adherence to deadlines and more than 150 years of expertise in the shipbuilding market, these are quality and performance characteristics that serve as valuable building blocks for the future, especially during the global shipbuilding crisis.