No peace and quiet in Riga this winter

	Riga Shipyard has a tight schedule with well-booked docks. PHOTO: MADLI VITISMANN

Riga Shipyard has had a stable workload during the past year and its docks are reserved months in advance. As freight costs have gone up, the shipowners attempt to keep the downtime to the minimum. Therefore, the schedules for repair work in the shipyard are also somewhat tighter. Nonetheless, there is a lot of work to be done.

– Even winter wasn’t a quiet period for us; in fact, we had overbooking in the hull maintenance works, declares Mr Eduard Maltsev, Head of the Marketing Division. Perhaps Latvia becoming a European Union member country has increased the goodwill of the shipyard, which was previously well known thanks to its dynamic marketing activities.

Becoming a member of the EU brought along an outflow of the workforce. According to Mr Maltsev, it was not really excessive but the tendency was clear. Therefore, when the shipyard has received major contracts, it has had to hire extra labour from Russia as well as from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland or Lithuania.

As Riga Shipyard operations have remained stable and its employees have not been laid off during the winter, the company might be able to hire people from smaller scale ship repair companies that do not have enough orders to sustain the workflow throughout the year.

Thousand tons of metal
The increase in metal prices also caused a price increase in ship repairs, but the shipowners are able to pay the new prices due to their improved financial situation. The largest amount of metal was used on two Danish ships last summer – the bulkers Challenger II and Explorer II, built in 1977, which each had 550 tons of metal replaced. The shipowner is also sending the next vessel requiring repairs to Riga Shipyard.

There are many vessels that require about 100 tons of metal replaced. However, the issue of concern for the shipyard is the customers who do not specify their orders prior to dispatching their vessels to undergo major repairs.

Thus, if during the course of repairs the shipyard discovers that the amount of work required will be much more extensive than initially estimated, the docks will remain occupied for a longer time than planned and it is harder for the shipyard to keep to the schedule and deadlines.

This has created problems to such an extent that the shipyard has been forced to turn down the next scheduled customer. Especially passenger ships have extra short deadlines on their repairs. Tallink’s Regina Baltica was docked in Riga and Riga Sea Line’s Baltic Kristina received major repairs: its engines, stabilizers, ramp and bow visor were all repaired.

The repair work on a Polish passenger ship scheduled shortly afterwards was completed before the deadline.

Modernized compressed air system
Riga Shipyard performed repairs on 120 vessels last year, and all the jobs were large-scale ones.

As of now, there are more incoming orders than the shipyard is able to deliver, confesses Mr Maltsev. The overall capacity of the shipyard has been increased by the introduction of new air compressor workshop and fully modernized compressed air system.

The shipbuilding division has received individual orders. For example, a megayacht and an over 70 m tanker vessel were built for a Scandinavian shipowner, and the backlog of orders is filled up to the end of the year.
However, the contract to build a series of ships for the Latvian Navy has not been officially awarded yet.

//Madli Vitismann

Latest update 18-10-2006 8:49

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