China COSCO orders 25 new vessels

China COSCO Holdings Company has agreed to spend $2.29bn for 25 new vessels of an aggregate 106,800teu and 2.113m dwt.

The series of agreements for eight 13,350teu vessels for $1.3bn, nine 57,000dwt dry bulk vessels for $348.9m and eight 200,000dwt dry bulk vessels for $612.8m are expected to help China COSCO cope with steadily increasing market demand for dry bulk. The Nantong COSCO KHI Ship Engineering, which holds contracts for two vessel types, is expected to deliver the first five 13,350teu vessels in 2012 with the remaining three for delivery in 2013, while the eight 200,000dwt dry bulk vessels are slated for delivery between 2010 and 2012. The nine 57,000dwt dry bulk vessels will be delivered by COSCO Shipyard Group between March-July 2009.

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ABG Shipyard to diversify into sub-sea vessels

ABG Shipyard has announced that it is to add sub-sea vessel construction to its portfolio of offshore offerings.

The shipyard, which is said to currently be conducting talks with a Middle East company for strategic technology tie-up, has revealed that it is also looking to secure contracts for the underwater exploration and production vessels. Sources expect the deal to be finalised early next month.

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Rolls-Royce Takes Stake in Tidal Power Project

Rolls-Royce is continuing to invest in renewable energy sources by taking a 23.5 per cent equity stake in TGL, a privately-owned company developing free stream tidal power generation capability.

Rolls-Royce is researching key technologies to provide solutions to the environmental challenges in aerospace, marine and energy markets in order to bring innovative products to market. It sees considerable synergies between the technologies and skills in its existing marine and energy businesses, and will apply these to TGL’s tidal power concept. TGL, in which Rolls-Royce has already invested £1.5 million and technical resource, is developing 500kW and 1MW demonstrators to assess viability ahead of the development of commercial multi-unit systems for tidal power arrays.
Additional development funding has come from the UK government to support the 500kW development unit, and International Power is to be launch customer, selecting, procuring and developing sites for the initial production units.
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