New tugs from Turkish shipyards are helping Cafimar modernise its Mediterranean fleet
Italian towage group Cafimar is expanding its fleet with newbuildings built in Turkey.
It took delivery of a harbour and coastal towage tug and ship escort tug in March from one shipyard in Q1 2019 and will begin operating a new vessel from another builder this month [June].
Cafimar Group managing director Gian Paolo Russo told Tug Technology & Business that Sanmar Shipyard delivered tug Sansone in March. This tug has bollard pull of 80 tonnes and was the sister tug to Laziale, which entered service in Q2 2018.
“By the second half of June 2019, we will take delivery of Sea Rock, with 70 tonnes of bollard pull, built at Bogadzici in Turkey,” he said.
Cafimar is owned by the Russo family and operates in three ports in Italy and in Porto Empedocle, in north-west Sicily.
It holds exclusive government licences for harbour towage in the ports of Civitavecchia – the port of Rome, in Palermo and Trapani.
“We are just completing a cycle of investments in newbuilding tugs,” he said. “It is a constant effort to renew the fleet and keep it at a relevant standard.”
He explained how Cafimar’s attention is “to keep its fleet up-to-date” through new deliveries. “This is joined by a constant effort to improve the quality of the overall performance delivered by our company, and in this respect, we are qualified with ISO 9001, 14001 and 18001 standards.”
Laziale and Sansone are both 461-gt tugs with 28.2 m overall length, 12.6 m beam and 5.4 m hull depth.
They were built to RINA class for ship escort and fire-fighting to FiFi1. They each have main engines of Caterpillar CAT 3516C HD and a pair of azimuthal propellers, Rolls-Royce US 255 CP. These give these tugs speeds of 14 knots ahead and astern.
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