News

Austal has secured a contract for a 67 metre high speed vehicle-passenger catamaran for Virtu Ferries of Malta adding to an already healthy order book for the West Australian shipbuilder. The new…

Kongsberg Maritime of Norway is launching a new vapour monitoring system designed to meet and exceed the SOLAS standards for cargo tank venting, purging, gas freeing and ventilation. The SOLAS regulation specifies…

A&P Tyne has announced record sales in the first half of 2004 with turnover in excess of £30m, an increase of 50% on the first half of the previous year (2003). This…

The Wärtsilä 46F is the latest in the highly successful marine engine series launched in 1987 with the Vasa 46, as it was then called. Though visually similar to the original Wärtsilä…

QinetiQ scientists in the UK have developed a unique onboard decision aid computer software tool to help Royal Navy bridge officers operate their ships safely in extreme weather conditions. ORPHEUS (Onboard Risk…

The Norwegian shipyard of Aker Brattvaag, a company in the Aker Yards Group, has signed a contract with The Great Eastern Shipping Co, Mumbai, India, for the construction of two Platform Supply…

The US plans to build eight diesel-electric submarines for Taiwan as part of an $18 billion arms package, a decision likely to irritate China, which has opposed the sale of weapons to…

Scania, the Swedish engine manufacturer, recently introduced a 12-litre marine engine equipped with Scania's unique electronic engine management system, Scania EMS. Now the power range is extended to meet customer and environmental…

Germanischer Lloyd (GL) has introduced its Shipboard Routing Assistance System (SRA) to help ship officers react promptly to heavy weather and, when necessary, sail round it.With SRA, the seaway data measured onboard…

Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has won an order to build eight LNG carriers for BP Shipping of the United Kingdom. The gas carriers will be in the 155,000 cubic meter class and…

Regulatory responses to marine casualties, which have dictated age limits for ships, have provoked vigorous debate about the issues of age and ship maintenance. While it has been argued that a well…

A DOR (Design, Operation, and Regulation) for Safety ? or in short SAFEDOR ? is the name of an ambitious initiative towards an integrated project within the 6th Framework Program (FP6) of…

As one of five strategic programmes in DNV Research, nanotechnology is a new area of high interest and relevance for the classification society. "We?ve been aware of this for at least two…

Best4 is a new quality, environment, safety and social accountability integrated certification scheme being offered by RINA. "It is a measure of the business excellence of a company and its capacity to…

While most participants in the single-hull versus double-hull debate accept that a second hull is not a panacea, it is acknowledged that it is an acceptable and cost effective way of preventing…

By now, most are aware of what exactly the new generation of classification rules for oil tankers are. The new Common Rules for Tankers are aimed at establishing a global standard, increased…

Following on from the delivery of the 2,6000TEU boxship MV Manukai from Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard (KPSI) to the San Francisco-based Matson Navigation Company, as reported in The Motor Ship in October 2003,…

Expert knowledge is said to be responsible for the increasing popularity of Bakker Sliedrecht?s diesel-electric propulsion systems. The company is acutely aware of the sharp increase in the application of electric drive…

The first of six innovative river cruise vessels is currently under construction at Neptun Stahlbau GmbH in Rostock-Warnemuende, a subsidiary of Meyer Werft Papenburg, and scheduled for delivery end of May 2005.…

Two SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) vessels, designed by BMT Nigel Gee and Associates, a subsidiary of British Maritime Technology (BMT), and built in Holland at the Vlissingen yard of the…

On 12 September 2004, ESAB celebrated its centenary. "The world is now a vastly different place than the one Oscar Kjellberg, ESAB?s founder, knew at the start of the last century," says…