The Swedish shipping company and shipper Ahlmark Lines has ordered two ships from Royal Bodewes in Hoogezand. These are so-called minibulk carriers, both of which will be delivered next year.
“We call these ships minibulkers. A large bulk carrier carries 100,000 or even 200,000 tonnes of cargo, such as coal or iron ore for the Hoogovens. These ships do the same, but are smaller by a factor of twenty”, says Martijn Beunk of Royal Bodewes.
This makes them relatively small vessels for Bodewes, which builds vessels of up to 130 meters in length in Hoogezand.
Work on the first of the two ships has already started. They are over 87 meters long and can carry 5000 tons of cargo. Both ships are specially adapted to the wishes of the customer. This gives them a reinforced hull, which allows them to sail through broken ice. This is necessary because the waters around Finland and Sweden are covered by ice for a large part of the year.
Reinforced hull
“In Finland, the ice can be as thick as 40 centimeters. The ice is then broken by an icebreaker, but the floes float in the water and often freeze together again. The ships we build are allowed to sail through it, because they have a certain reinforcement in the skin”, says Beunk. “In some ports in the Baltic Sea you are not allowed to come if you do not have that ice class adjustment.”
The ships will also receive a so-called cleanship note. The emission of emissions is limited as much as possible. The fuel tanks of the carriers do not make direct contact with the fuselage. As a result, the chance of fuel leaks after a possible collision with another ship or a rock is small. “This requires specific engineering and we are all very good at that here in the Netherlands.”
Fantastic order
“This is a fantastic order for us. We are currently working on two relatively complex vessels: a large cement carrier for a shipping company in Taiwan and a roll-on-roll-off vessel for French Polynesia. That is a completely new design, which requires an enormous amount of engineering. The beauty of the two ships that have now been ordered is that they are copies of a ship that we delivered two years ago, so that ninety percent of the engineering is already done. That gives us room to invest time and energy in the difficult projects”, says Beunk.
The ships for Ahlmark are being built at Damen’s former shipyard in Foxhol. In addition, Bodewes also owns the former De Hoop yard, which is located next to shipbuilder Ferus Smit. Like other shipyards on the Winschoterdiep, Bodewes has a lot of work on its books: the order book is filled until mid-2025. “An energy transition is underway and too little has been built in the past fifteen years. I see a bright future, even though many prices have gone up enormously”, says Beunk.
Ahlmark has existed for 175 years and is one of the oldest shipping companies in Sweden. The fleet consists of ten bulk carriers. The company mainly transports many wood products to England and other countries in Western Europe.