Hurst Point :
Built for strategic transports

	“Hurst Point”. German design wins out for AWSR.

It was in late June 2000 that the British Ministry of Defence, the lessons of the Falklands now well learned, placed a contract for six special ro-ro newbuildings to form the vanguard of a new British strategic transport service designed to move men and equipment fast to crisis flashpoints around the world.
The first of them, “Hurst Point”, was delivered in August and all six ships will have been completed and handed over by May of next year.
The MoD ordered them from the consortium AWSR Shipping, which groups Andrew Weir, James Fisher, Bibby Line and Houlder Hadley Shipping. That group had already determined that the best and most economical vessels for the job were not British-built at all but German.
By the time “Hurst Point” was completed, much of the initial political furore caused by shipbuilding orders going abroad while Britain’s own shipyards were dying had dissipated. Questions were even raised in Parliament before it was confirmed that the best ships for the MoD were being built at small German shipyard Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, FSG.

From Germany and UK
Four were ordered from that yard, which has led the world in the design and construction of innovative ro-ro ships for several years. The remaining two were to be built under FSG licence at Harland & Wolff in Belfast.
FSG started to build the versatile, specially designed and re-inforced Type RoRo 2700, 22,900 gt/13,350 DWT “Hurst Point” in September 2001. Her keel was laid in January this year and she was launched in April.
On the same day as she was handed over, FSG also launched its second ship Eddystone, for handover this year and scheduled the handover of its final two ships Longstone and Beachy Head for February and May 2003.
Harland & Wolff has in the meantime also completed its first ship, “Hartland Point” and planned to hand over the second, “Anvil Point”, in the first quarter of 2003. All are worthy memebers of the MoD’s Military Sealift operation. FSG series leader“Hurst Point” is 193 m long, 183 lbp, as well as 26 m wide (29 m wide overall) and with a scantling draft of 7.4 m.
She carries 189 12.6 m trailers on a total 2,620 lane m on three decks, as well as 656 containers. Consuming 42 tons of fuel a day she is designed for 12,000 nautical miles endurance or 30 days at sea without calling at port.
It is easy to see why the characteristics of the Lloyd’s classified vessel were attractive to AWSR’s purpose. “Hurst Point” and her sisters are modelled on FSG’s Turkish UND series ro-ro ships and their design has been modified for military transport.

Reinforced decks for tanks
As well as mounting a 40 ton crane each ship can carry up to 13,000 tons of materials on decks and ramps which have been reinforced for containers, trucks and heavy tracked vehicles. The MoD itself has not been shy in revealing that the vehicles that can now be carried include Challenger 2 tanks, AS90 self-propelled howitzers, Warrior infantry combat vehicles “and many other types of armoured and unarmoured military vehicles”.
“Hurst Point”and the two H&W ships are propelled by two 7-cylinder MaK Type M43 four-stroke medium speed diesels, each of 6,300 kW output and developing 18 knots.
The other three FSG-built vessels have the same dimensions but are driven by two bigger, 9-cylinder MaK Type M43 diesels of 8,100 kW per ship and developing 21 knots.
They are modified successors of the six ro-ro ships completed by FSG for Turkish operator UND.
FSG has only recently acknowledged over-budget spending on this ships, which marked the yard’s turn away from container ship building in the 1990s and launched a so-far remarkable ro-ro success story.
That story has not ended with the AWSR ships. FSG still also has an order worth EUR 253 million for five 30,800 gt/10,500 DWT ro-ro ships each with four decks and 3,900 lane m from Denmark’s DFDS Tor Line.

They are the biggest ships built so far by FGS.
The Danes in fact converted an option for the fifth ship earlier this year, becoming one of what is still only a handful of shipping companies to have placed new orders in Germany since EU subsidies were abolished at the end of 2000. Despite those orders and new designs for bigger ro-ro and now also ro-pax vessels, FSG has confessed to great concern over future costing and prices in Flensburg and admitted that it might not survive.
In a recent statement it warned that European shipyards faced “merciless competition” from Asia and that the future would be a difficult one in which Asian competition would increase and in which “we will have to fight for every ship”. Adding that the world shipbuilding market “is in a catastrophic condition” it said only the ro-pax segment, on which it would now concentrate, was “the only one offering any hope of a few contracts”. As of December, however, FSG had not reportedly booked any orders for ro-pax ships.
The yard said it would exploit all its strengths to survive and planned overall cost reductions of 20 per cent. Earlier this year it revealed plans up to productivity by 20 per cent and output by 14 per cent up to 2005, by which time the DFDS ships are due for delivery.
“We may have full order books, but those orders risk becoming losses and we must neutralise that risk”, it said. “Performance weaknesses have to be rooted out.”

//Tom Todd

Back to SSG 11, December 20

Latest update 18-10-2006 8:49

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