'Touchdown' christened and delivered by Rigdon Marine Corporation

Billy Guice, Vice President of Marketing and Sales of Rigdon Marine Corporation announced the christening and delivery of the 'Touchdown' in Lockport, Louisiana.

Mrs. Laura Rabalais, wife of JR Rabalais, RMC Maintenance and Repair Superintendent, christened the sixth of ten Rigdon 4000 Class vessel with the traditional champagne against the bow. The 'Touchdown' was immediately deployed on a term charter in support of a deepwater drilling program in the GOM. The 'Touchdown' is a 58-metre x 14-metre x 5.5-metre, diesel electric, DP-2 PSV, which features a capacity of 4,000 barrels of liquid mud in an oval, self-cleaning, segregated tank system. The PSV will also include three Z-Drives and two large forward tunnel thrusters. The Rigdon 4000 Class PSVs are capable of serving a wide array of marine applications in all water depths. The remaining four Rigdon 4000 class PSVs will be delivered in approximate forty day intervals during through the third quarter of 2008.

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Ship building industry in crisis over steel price rise

JFE Steel Corp has agreed on a 65 percent hike in the prices of iron ore it procures in fiscal 2008 from a major Brazilian metals and mining company compared with a year ago.

Masamoto Tazaki, chairman of the Shipbuilders' Association of Japan has described the agreement as 'shocking'. 'We do not know if the steel makers will shift their entire increase in costs to the price of their products, but it seems that this increase will end up being absorbed by all other industries such as the shipbuilding, automobile and machinery industries. ' He added that, 'While other industries can quickly reflect the increased costs in the prices of their products, only the shipbuilding industry, where the ship prices are determined in advance, has no capacity to absorb the increased costs. 'Another issue we need to tackle is to devise the structure of contracts that can slide along with the costs. Amid the speedy development all over the world, the shipbuilding industry will not survive if we do not do this,' adding that, 'We hope to veer away from high-risk, low-return businesses and shift to middle-risk, middle-return businesses instead.'

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Bangladesh Makes Debut in Int'l Shipbuilding Market

Bangladesh will debut in the international shipbuilding market with two ships being handed over to Denmark on Monday.

Western Marine Shipyard Ltd, one of the shipbuilding companies in Bangladesh, will formally kick-start its historic journey Monday when two ships, made by the company, will be handed over to Denmark. A ceremony marking the auspicious occasion will be arranged at the country's largest shipyard at Patia on Monday. Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry administrator Syed Manjur Elahi will attend the program as chief guest while Danish Ambassador Einar H Jensen as special guest. The company has already received orders for making 18 oceangoing ships. Five will be made for Denmark while 12 for Holland and one for Singapore. It will be possible to earn US$ 180 million worth of foreign exchange by exporting those ships.

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Neptune to acquire rig for deepwater conversion

Neptune Marine Oil & Gas Ltd. has entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with Zelie Industrial Limited, a Cypriot incorporated company.

The agreement is to acquire the semisubmersible drilling rig Atlantic Venture, originally known as the Sedco 708, for a purchase price of US$67 million. Sedco 708 is a second-generation semi originally built by Kaiser Steel Shipyard in California in 1977 to the Sedco 700 design. Atlantic Venture last operated as a drilling rig in 2002 while owned by Transocean. The rig has changed hands several times. In 2005, Thule Drilling bought the rig from Dubai-based Momentum Engineering, and Thule later sold the rig to Atlantic Marine Offshore Services in 2006. Also known as the Gulfdrill 7, the rig has had a sale restriction preventing it from being upgraded or maintained as a drilling unit, but that ban ends in July of this year. In April of last year, Atlantic Venture was picked up in Dubay and delivered by Fairmount Marine B.V. heavy-lift barge Gavea Lifter in Saldanha Bay, South Africa, where the rig was scheduled to undergo a life enhancement program.

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Star suffers massive loss

Star Cruises collapsed even further into the red on currency translations and fuel expenses, but will reap gains from its Apollo deal in 2008.

Star reported a loss of $201M for full-year 2007 and a loss of $124M for 4Q07, versus losses of $156M for 2006 and $148M for 4Q06. Stripping out various non-operating factors such as currency, Star’s losses totaled $157M in 2007 versus $104M in 2006. Star’s Asian division saw 4Q07 revenue increase 21% on higher capacity, but this was counterbalanced by a 2.6% drop in yield and a 7% hike in operating costs, due to fuel and charter fees. Star’s NCL unit in North America grew 4Q07 revenue by 15% on 4% more capacity and an impressive 11% jump in yields. NCL’s fuel prices shot up 46% in 4Q07, but operating expenses grew only 5% thanks to lower payroll and startup costs. Apollo’s $1bn equity infusion into NCL closed on 7 January, and Star said that it would record a gain of $74M in 2008 from that transaction. Star stressed that the Apollo deal will allow it to “concentrate its management and financial resources on its Asia-Pacific/Greater China cruise businesses”.

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New rail service launched at Thamesport

Thamesport (London) has welcomed the start of a new rail service.

After an absence of 18 months from the Port, EWS Railway has returned to the Kent facility to launch its Thamesport to Daventry service. The service operates five days per week, and is able to offer capacity for high cube containers, in addition to standard units. Chris Lewis, Chief Executive Officer of Hutchison Ports (UK), which owns Thamesport, said: 'It is important that we offer shippers a rail option through our ports, and this new service provides a boost to the range of destinations that are served by rail from Thamesport. We are committed to increasing the share of freight transported by rail through the Port, and we were pleased to reach a record throughput in 2007, with a total of 50,000 containers passing through the Port's rail terminal.' Importantly, expansion work to the Port's rail facility is due to commence in September 2008. This work will extend the rail terminal's sidings to allow 24-wagon-length trains to be worked without the need to break and shunt individual units. Three other services connect Thamesport to Birmingham, Leeds/Coatbridge, Manchester, Doncaster and Birch Coppice.
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Yinxing Shipyard lo launch $32m expansion

South China's Jiangmen Yinxing Shipbuilding has announced that it plans to invest CNY 228m ($31.9m) to build a 50,000-tonnage shipbuilding addition to the current yard.

The 15-hectare expansion is scheduled for completion by 2010 and will boast an annual capacity of four vessels of 50,000dwt each. The current yard boasts an annual shipbuilding capacity of ten 1,000-12,000dwt ships, and is due to deliver a 6,500dwt oil tanker and two 4,500dwt oil supply ships in February and March respectively.
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