Germany-headquartered Fairplay Towage Group provides emergency response and oil pollution clean-up services in German coastal and inland waters with five pollution fighting vessels stationed in Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven, Hamburg, Kiel and Rostock
These operate under the umbrella of Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kuestenschutz, the German coastal protection service, founded by Fairplay Towage.
It has chartered the emergency towing vessels Baltic, Nordic, and Fairplay 35 to the Waterways and Shipping Authority (WSA) Elbe-North Sea. Fairplay 35 is owned by Remolques Gijoneses and is chartered to Fairplay.
Other oil and pollution response vessels in Fairplay’s management are mostly owned by coastal states.
Crew train with German coastguard, police and fire-fighters several times a year to keep their skill levels up and all systems on board in service.
Fairplay manages emergency tug Nordic in Cuxhaven and at Helgoland anchorage, an offshore position north of the East Frisian island of Norderney. This 78-m, 2010-built vessel is the most powerful tugboat in German waters with a bollard pull of 201 tonnes.
Fairplay also manages 61-m, 2010-built emergency towage vessel Baltic, with 127 tonnes of bollard pull, located in Kuehlungsborn, Germany according to Marine Traffic automatic identification system data.
Oceangoing tug Fairplay-35 has been hired by the German Administration to take a standby position in the River Elbe to respond to emergencies. This 37-m vessel has azimuth stern drive propulsion and 109 tonnes of bollard pull.
Fairplay also operates Westensee, an oil recovery catamaran which can recover contaminated water-oil mixtures. It has no propulsion so it needs to be coupled with a tug and pushed to its operational site. The water-oil mixture pollution goes over a sloping ramp between the floats of the catamaran and is transferred into the wing tanks in the floats, where oil is separated by gravity from the water. The water is then transferred into the lower part of the tanks, while the oil is kept in the tank because of its lower density.
Westensee can skim around 90,000 m²/hr at a speed of 3 knots. It is stationed in Bremerhaven and can be mobilised into the North Sea or the surrounding rivers within a matter of hours.
Fairplay Towage is a founding member of the German Coast Protection which was established after general cargo ship Pallas caused oil pollution along the German coast in Q4 1998.
In addition to the three Fairplay tugs, the emergency towing vessel fleet in Germany includes Boluda Towage’s Bremen Fighter in Sassnitz, and a number of federal government owned multipurpose vessels - Neuwerk, Scharhoern and Mellum, which will be replaced with newbuildings that are under construction, and Arkona.
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