TODAY’S BULLETIN OF MARITIME NEWS
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- First View : HUA XING LONG
- Probe into missing diesel consignment at Durban harbour
- Djibouti Government spurns Doraleh Terminal London ruling
- Ports Regulator calls for comment on TNPA Tariff Application
- NIMASA chief calls for less, not more Nigerian maritime agencies
- Nigerian Ports Authority ready to invest in Eastern ports
- Fishing for the needy at Port Elizabeth
- AIDA Cruises coming to Mauritius, Mozambique and South Africa in 2020
- CMA CGM Megamax-24 containerships to lose their bulbous bows
- ACS helps to avert Hawaiian disaster
- Expected Ship Arrivals and Ships in Port
- Cruise News and Naval Activities
- Pics of the Day : HOKUETSU CENTURY
- The masthead image today (Tuesday) is of the Port of Saldanha
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The Chinese semi-submersible heavylift ship HUA XING LONG (IMO 9808182) is shown here on her way towards the Durban port entrance after making a bunker and supplies call at the KZN port, accompanied by the harbour pilot tug LUFAFA. Although she gives an impression of hugeness, the heavylift is only 167 metres in length, with a width of 40 metres. The 27,558-gt ship might be mistaken for one of COSCO’s massive fleet that includes about a dozen of these semi-submersibles as well as hundreds of other type vessels, but this is not so. Hua Xing Long is owned and managed by Guangzhou Salvage Bureau Guangzhou, Guangdong, China and was built earlier this year. This picture is by Trevor Jones
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PROBE INTO MISSING DIESEL CONSIGNMENT AT DURBAN HARBOUR
How do you lose 16 containers of diesel fuel? Obviously you don’t ‘lose’ it but it can and has gone missing from the outer confines of Durban Harbour and now nobody is able to say where it is.
According to the reports being circulated the diesel fuel, loaded in flexi-bags inside the containers, arrived by ship from India and after discharging were sent by road to a local container storage facility. Two importers are involved, one for 10 of the containers and other for six. This was almost one year ago, in September 2017 but the news is only now surfacing.
It seems the imports were flagged for further enquiry by Customs when it was suspected that the cargo had been cleared using an incorrect tariff heading. Initial testing of the product suggested that the contents were diesel and the consignments were then subjected to further testing at an independent laboratory. That was when the containers were transferred to the container depot.
However, during this process the depot advised the SARS Customs office thast the containers had been released on the basis of an email supposedly issued by the shipping agency involved, a division of the shipping line involved. A Customs official says this was unauthorised as the detention order issued by SARS had not been lifted on the cargo.
The connection between the shipping line and the container depot as well as the transport company that removed the boxes is under investigation although a SARS spokesperson said an audit being carried out involves only the South African importers at this stage.
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DJIBOUTI GOVERNMENT SPURNS DORALEH TERMINAL LONDON RULING
The government of Djibouti says that it has sovereign rights over the Doraleh Container Terminal and that the verdict of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) has no standing and is therefore rejected.
Last week the LCIA made its decision on the dispute between the Djibouti Ports and Free Zone Authority (DPFZA) and…[restrict] DP World the operator and concession-holder of the Doraleh Terminal, in which it ruled that the concession agreement was still legally binding.
However, the statement issued by the DPFZA says: “The termination of the concession contract conforms to international public law and is both necessary and inevitable.
“International law recognises the ability of a sovereign nation to unilaterally cancel a concession contract on the grounds of public interest, subject to the payment of fair compensation to the other party.
“The termination procedure was also carried out in a transparent manner. Its legal basis is grounded in a law enacted by the Djiboutian Parliament on 8 November 2017, aimed at protecting the fundamental interests of the nation, and reinforced by a decree of 22 February 2018.”
The motivation for the drastic action taken by Djibouti appears to be rooted in its desire to turn the small Gulf of Aden country on the African continent into a trading hub.
Earlier in July (6 July 2018) Djibouti signed the China-backed Djibouti International Free Trade Zone (DIFTZ), which is the most modern free trade zone in Africa.
Suggestions have been made although denied by Djibouti that Doraleh will be turned over to a Chinese company to operate. China is currently building a logistics base at Djibouti from which its naval ships can operate. Some reports have suggested the Chinese base will be larger than Camp Lemonnier, the former French Foreign Legion base now occupied by the US military.[/restrict]
This story is not yet over.
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PORTS REGULATOR CALLS FOR COMMENTS ON TNPA TARIFF APPLICATION
Port users and stakeholders have been invited to submit comments on the 2019/20 Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) Tariff Application.
The notice to this effect was issued by the Ports Regulator on 2 August and port users and stakeholders have until Friday, 12 October to make their written comments.
Comments can be emailed to comments@portsregulator.org
They can also be posted to:
The Chairman
Ports Regulator
Private Bag X54322
DURBAN 4000
TNPA’s proposed tariffs for the coming fiscal year 2019/20 have a weighted average increase of 4.21%.
This is made up by a tariff increase of 8% on marine charges; 5% on liquid bulk and breakbulk cargoes; 1.79% on containers; 5% on dry bulk cargoes and zero percent on automotive exports.
The dry bulk cargo tariffs are differentiated as follows: 8% increase on coal exports; 8% increase on magnetite; 3.75% increase on other dry bulk commodities.
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NIMASA CHIEF CALLS FOR LESS, NOT MORE NIGERIAN MARITIME AGENCIES
Dr Dakuku Peterside (pictured), Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) says that creating additional agencies in the maritime sector would only overburden it. What was needed, he said, was to strengthen the existing agencies ones for optimum service delivery.
The NIMASA D-G was speaking during the 2018 Half Year Maritime Forecast Review. He said there were complaints from…[restrict] ship owners that only in Nigeria were there too many agencies interfacing directly with vessels calling at the nation’s ports.
He said he’d received a lot of complaints from the ship owners that different government agencies board their vessels calling for documents that result in a duplication of duties while increasing the delay in turnaround times for the vessels.
“So it means if we create new agencies we are simply going to overburden the sector which is enjoying a new level of progression under President Muhammadu Buhari,” Peterside said.
He pointed out that in order to avoid duplication of duties and to support the ‘Ease of Doing Business Agenda’ of the Federal Government, NIMASA has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Armed forces as well as collaborations with the Nigerian Customs Service, Nigerian Immigration service, the Nigerian Police and even the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The current maritime regulatory agencies under the Ministry of Transportation have enough mandates to ensure safety and security in the sector while the Nigerian Navy could not be allowed to board merchant vessels for regulatory activities according to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) regulations, Merchant Shipping Act and other regulatory instruments that are in line with global best practices.
“There is no way the Nigerian Navy can act as a regulator in the sector and we have been working together especially in line with the MoU that exists between us to ensure security in the sector which is in line with what the IMO stipulates and so we should not be thinking about creating more regulatory agencies or the Navy taking the job of other regulatory agencies. The best thing to do is to strengthen these agencies to be able to perform optimally,” he said.
Dr Peterside charged stakeholders to support the Industry’s growth stating that things are changing at an incredible pace and that there is the need to support the current maritime agencies to dynamically position the sector for optimal benefits. source: NIMASA[/restrict]
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NIGERIAN PORTS AUTHORITY READY TO INVEST IN EASTERN PORTS
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman, says the ports authority is ready and willing to invest in the country’s eastern ports.
Usman said that the NPA is willing to invest N1 billion in the eastern seaports to help decongest the western ports and…[restrict] help to relieve the chronic and chaotic traffic outside the ports of Apapa and Tin Can Island in Lagos.
The managing director was reacting to appeals from stakeholders in some of the eastern ports who said the solution to the Lagos congestion could lie in diverting traffic east, but that the eastern ports would first require some upgrading.
These ports include Warri, Onne, Calabar and Port Harcourt. All of these are, in the view of the operators, grossly underutilised which has resulted in an over concentration of business in the Lagos port complex of Apapa and Tin Can Island.
In some respects this appears a naive view although port services do obviously have a role in the location of business. To suggest however that businesses will relocate or even agree to have cargo diverted without recourse to a levelling of costs is highly unlikely. This is even more unlikely given the lack of good rail connectivity between the eastern and western ports.
According to statistics more than 70 percent of cargo arriving at the twin ports of Apapa and Tin Can Island remain in the greater Lagos complex. Improving the capacity of the eastern ports will stimulate the economies of that region to some extent but is unlikely to reduce the pressure that lies on the Lagos ports.
Given that both Tin Can Island and Apapa are within the city confines, each close to the busy central city area also means that there is little prospect of greatly improving the capacities of both and the solution surely must lie in the development of newer ports in close proximity such as the proposed but much delayed Lekki and Badagry deepwater ports. source: Daily Trust and Africa PORTS & SHIPS[/restrict]
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FISHING FOR THE NEEDY AT PORT ELIZABETH
With a blanket as entry fee about 250 anglers were given access to a safe fishing spot for the Port of Port Elizabeth’s latest quarterly fishing day, which set out to bring warmth to Nelson Mandela Bay residents in need.
The ‘We’ve Got Winter Covered’ charity fishing day, organised by Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) and held on 21 July, collected a total of 260 blankets.
On 3 August employees from the Port of PE handed these over to various organisations caring for people in need – including Ekuphumleni Old Age Home, Inn Safe Hands Children’s Home, the Sinako, Licebo and Siphuthando Day Care Centres, as well as homeless people living around Vuyisile Mini Square in Nelson Mandela Bay.
These quarterly community fishing days are part of TNPA’s People’s Port vision, which includes promoting greater public access and ensuring a vibrant port system, connecting local communities to port activities.
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An unusual visitor to Southern African waters in the summer of the 2019/20 cruise season will be AIDA Cruises when the 42,289-gt ship, AIDAaura, the third in the AIDA fleet and sister ship to AIDAavita, undertakes her third World Cruise from 28 October 2019 to 22 February 2020.
During the cruise the 1300-passenger ship will travel to 41 ports in 17 countries, including Mauritius, Mozambique, several ports in South Africa and Lüderitz in Namibia. Other highlights on her cruise will be sailing to Australia, New Zealand, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, Bora Bora among…[restrict] other dream destinations.
Some of her port calls will be firsts in the history of AIDA – the Cook Islands in the middle of the Pacific, three new ports in New Zealand, Kangaroo Island and Esperance in Australia, Maputo in Mozambique, and East London in South Africa.
One doesn’t have to cruise all the way around the globe, enticing as that idea may be. The duration of the cruise stages varies from 34 to 48 days – providing perfect opportunities of fulfilling the dream of an entirely unique voyage in shorter stages. AIDA guests can, for example, travel from Hamburg to San Antonio in 35 days, from San Antonio to Mauritius in 48 days, or from Mauritius to Hamburg in 34 days.
The individual stages of the AIDAaura World Cruise can be booked starting from €4,695 per person (including the €700 Early Saver Plus discount for bookings by 31 May 2019).
AIDAaura will complete her world circuit in the German Port of Hamburg. The main language spoken on board is German.
The ship was built in 2003 by the German shipyard Aker MTW in Wismar at a cost of US$350 million.[/restrict]
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Or more correctly, they are being built without bulbous bows, as opposed to the custom of recent years.
The latest theory on the question of the shape of a ship’s bow harks back a century or more before so-called streamlining came in to effect, with ships designed with sweeping bows to provide impressions of speed and sleekness. This was particularly evident on…[restrict] some passenger and cruise ships.
But now, with the design of the latest megaship of in excess of 20,000 TEU container capacity, and with lengths of around the 400 metre mark, but with constraints imposed on speed of travel, the design of ships is undergoing further radical thinking – back to the past and that Dreadnought look.
Pictures that have appeared of French line CMA CGM’s latest newbuilds, the LNG-powered next-generation Megamax-24 design shows a move away from sleekness and the need for travelling at slower speeds which has reduced if not removed (for now) the need for fitting the traditonal bulbous bow.
The design of ordinary merchantships with bulbous bows though common now is not that old, having begun appearing several decades ago as a means of reducing turbulence produced as the ship moved forward, especially at speed. With slower steaming or motoring as the price of fuel increased that requirement is falling away and the future trend looks to be ships with straight up and down bows and no bulbous protruburences in front.
Strangely, the bulbous bow also harks back to the early 1900s when it appeared on an American warship, the USS Delaware in 1910 and followed on a series of US naval ships before being copied by passenger ship designers intent of maximising the speed of their ships.[/restrict]
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ACS HELPS TO AVERT HAWAIAN DISASTER
In late May, Air Charter Service was called upon to source an aircraft capable of flying 68 tonnes of the fire retardant ore, barite, to battle the increasing threat of lava reaching a geothermal power plant in Hawaii.
Richard Thompson, President of ACS Americas, commented: “Towns and countryside were being turned into a volcanic wasteland as lava from the erupting Kilauea Volcano made its way across the island. This in itself was devastating, but the flow was fast approaching the Puna Geothermal Venture plant which would have meant further disaster, so an urgent plan was formulated to prevent the lava pouring into the wells at the site.
“We were contacted by a specialist freight forwarder to source an aircraft that could fly in a large amount of barite, which acts as a fire retardant, as soon as possible. Barite is a claylike substance that hardens when heated and the plan was to use it to cap the geothermal wells and protect them from the lava flow. We found an MD-11 that was capable of carrying the entire shipment in the necessary timescale.
“The flight went without a hitch and the wells were capped with the barite and deactivated shortly afterwards. As an extra precaution the plant was later shut down and 60,000 gallons (230,000 litres) of flammable liquid were removed from the site.
“Since then, three of the 11 wells at the site have been covered by the lava flow, meaning that it was critical to get the barite delivered as urgently as we managed and in place to protect the wells.”
Details of Air Charter Service can be found b CLICKING HERE
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CRUISE NEWS AND NAVAL ACTIVITIES
QM2 in Cape Town. Picture by Ian Shiffman
We publish news about the cruise industry here in the general news section.
Naval News
Similarly you can read our regular Naval News reports and stories here in the general news section.
PIC OF THE DAY : HOKUETSU CENTURY
The building of a wood chip terminal at Maydon Wharf in recent years has meant that the port is visited by a succession of mostly Japanese wood chip carriers such as the 60,594-dwt HOKUETSU CENTURY (IMO 9343560) seen here departing from Durban last week after loading wood chips grown in the KZN Midlands. The logs are delivered by road to the Maydon Wharf terminal where the chipping takes place, with the chips stored in a massive modern building that holds in excess of 40,000 tons of chips. Hokuetsu Century, built in 2007 and like the several other ‘Hokuetsu’ ships of her type, sails directly to Japan to the mill where the chips will be used for the manufacture of paper products.
Ironically, while this is happening the local Merebank paper mill of Mondi announced last Friday that it is closing one of its uncoated fine paper machines at the Merebank plant, with possible further job losses.
In 2013 Mondi closed its Richards Bay SilvaCell woodchip export operation at the Port of Richards Bay as well as one of its two remaining newsprint paper making machines at the Merebank factory in Durban. The loss of the newsprint machine was a reflection then of the state of the newspaper publishing industry, which since then has contracted even further.
At its peak the Richards Bay SilvaCell plant was producing more than a million tons of eucalyptus and wattle woodchips annually.
Meanwhile, the Japanese wood chip ships keep calling and the forests of KZN keep supplying them with material to keep their plants running, Can someone explain the economics of it all please.
The pictures above are by Keith Betts who is not responsible for the comments.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
“We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.”
― Christopher Isherwood
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