The German federal government approved a new round of financing to support the financially troubled MV Werften shipyard with operations in Wismar, Warnemunde, and Stralsund, Germany. The shipyard had been facing bankruptcy since its operations were suspended 14 months ago during the pandemic and had been contributing to the financial difficulties of its parent company Genting Hong Kong. The shipyard had received a series of bridge loans starting last fall to continue limited operations.

After months of negotiations between the German federal and regional government, the shipyard’s labor unions, MV Werften, and Genting Hong Kong, the Economic Stabilization Fund set up by the federal government to assist with the recovery from the pandemic has agreed to provide further financial support for the shipyard. The new economic support will be used as post-construction financing for the exploration cruise ship Crystal Endeavor that yard has nearly completed as well as to finance the construction of Genting’s first Global Dream cruise ship and for general corporate purposes.

“This is an important decision that gives employees in the region and the country as a whole confidence,” Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier told the German news outlet NDR. “The shipyards now have the chance to successfully emerge from the pandemic-related crisis.”

The new financing will be completed in two tranches. The yard will receive $261 million in a new subordinated secured loan facility and Germany will invest an additional $85 million in the form of a limited-recourse equity stake. As part of the rescue package, the unions also agreed to an approximately 20 percent reduction in the workforce, or 650 jobs from the 3,000 jobs before the yard suspending operations in 2020.

“We are pleased with the outcome and would like to express our sincere gratitude to the ministries of the federal and regional governments, the KfW investment and development bank, and the other banks for their commitment, and also for the hard, but fair negotiations during the course of the past few months,” said Carsten J. Haake Managing Director of MV Werften.

The management of MV Werften also expressed renewed confidence, pointing to signs of recovery within Germany and the cruise industry. They highlighted the reduced restrictions as COVID-19 vaccinations have become more available which they said was “enabling supply chains to revert to the just-in-time mode,” the yard employed before the pandemic.

The bridge financing provided in 2020 was used primarily for the completion of the expedition cruise ship which will enter service this summer more than a year behind schedule for Genting’s luxury cruise brand Crystal Cruises. The 20,200 gross ton ship completed final sea trials the last week of May and is due to enter service on July 17.

The Global Dream is a 208,000 gross ton cruise ship being built for Genting’s Asian cruise line Dream Cruises. It has been under construction at the shipyard since 2018. Limited work had been proceeding on the vessel over the past year, but the new financing is designed to support the completion of the ship. Delivery on the cruise ship is now scheduled for 2022.

MV Werften was set up by Genting in 2016 through the acquisition of a series of shipyards in Germany. The yard was established to build ocean going and river cruise ships for Genting’s brands and planned to market to the broader cruise industry. With the new financing in place, the yard once again hopes to attract new orders, including a sister ship to the Crystal Endeavor. The yard had begun work on the second Global Dream cruise ship, but it will remain suspended at this time pending further financing.

Genting Hong Kong has been undergoing its own financial restructuring brought on by the impact of the pandemic in the cruise and hospitality industries. Completion of the financing agreement with Germany was a key part of Genting’s package, although the company must also raise additional capital before the end of the year to support its cruise and casino operations.

In addition to the financing being provided to the shipyard, the German fund has also provided support to other companies in the travel and hospitality industry, including the German airline Lufthansa and tour operator TUI.

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As part of the effort to stem the tide of plastic pollution entering the world’s oceans, the Coca-Cola Company is joining with The Ocean Cleanup to expedite the deployment of cleanup systems in fifteen rivers around the world. The partnership is part of the Dutch non-profit foundation’s efforts to stop plastic pollution by capturing it before it enters the world’s oceans.

Through the partnership, The Ocean Cleanup, together with Coca-Cola, will implement the foundation’s technology know as the Inceptor in fifteen rivers by the end of 2022. Two Interceptors included in the partnership have already been installed in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, and Can Tho, Vietnam. For these rivers, the partnership will help provide support in the development of waste management solutions for collected trash.

The organizations plan to extend the footprint of the Inceptor project across thirteen additional rivers in the next 18 months. In addition, they also hope to engage and mobilize both industry and individuals around the world to address plastic pollution, by eliminating plastic waste entering the world’s oceans and supporting ecosystems and water resources.

“The Ocean Cleanup’s mission is to rid the oceans of plastic,” said Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO, The Ocean Cleanup. “With 1000 rivers emitting nearly 80 percent of river-carried plastic into oceans, this massive problem grows by the day, which is why we are always looking to accelerate our progress. Among the waste we collect with our cleanup systems, we find many plastic bottles, including Coca-Cola packaging, so I applaud them for being the first in the industry to join our mission, as part of their wider actions to make a positive impact on worldwide plastic pollution. Our clear intent is to take our learnings from this partnership, which has the potential to evolve in the future and continue to scale rapidly. That’s why I believe this is good news for our oceans.”

The foundation’s Interceptor was unveiled in 2019 and is the first scalable solution to prevent plastic from entering the world’s oceans from rivers. It is solar-powered, extracts trash autonomously, and?is capable of operating in the majority of the world’s most polluting rivers.

The partnership will provide support for the local community engagements needed to deploy new Interceptors, as well as in the subsequent processing of the collected plastic via waste management expertise. The Ocean Cleanup and Coca-Cola will work together to secure the new partners and investment needed to continue to scale the enterprise through the roll-out of additional Interceptor solutions, as well as to secure licensing support and deploy River Monitoring System (RMS) cameras to conduct further analysis of river pollution.

Brian Smith, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Coca-Cola Company, said: “The Ocean Cleanup has a clear vision and proven technologies to support its goal to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. At Coca-Cola, we have teams on the ground who will support the deployment of new Interceptors in rivers around the world, as well as the processing and recycling of the waste collected. Working together, we believe we can have real impact. That’s exciting: it’s something we know our employees in every corner of the world will get behind, by helping to support the local implementation work and as ambassadors for the wider mission.”

According to The Ocean Cleanup, tackling plastic waste will require action and thinking from the best and the brightest, including civil society, industry peers, and the public sector. Accordingly, The Coca-Cola Company has helped to establish or has joined global partnerships that will help to realize the vision for a World Without Waste. The collective goal is to encourage more people to recycle and reuse and more organizations to invest in the circular economy, in which products and materials at the end of their useful life retain their value and are returned to the manufacturing process as part of a closed-loop in which little, if anything, is wasted.

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Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula may soon be home to an advanced tidal energy power project. Tidal-power developer ORPC has applied for a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) permit for the installation of a five-megawatt pilot project near Nikiski, with plans for a phased development of a 100-megawatt commercial scale plant.

Nikiski is desirable as a development site because of the “extreme velocity” of the tides in Cook Inlet, ORPC representative Merrick Jackinsky told local KDLL Radio. But tidal power technology is still in its early days, and monetizing Cook Inlet’s tidal resources will likely take years of permitting and trials.

ORPC has already installed one of its units at an inland site on the Kvichak River in Igiugig, Alaska, near Bristol Bay. The firm says that the installation is the longest-running water current powerplant of its kind in the U.S., and it will soon be upgraded with a second unit. With two ORPC systems in place, the local community expects to cut its diesel consumption for power generation by 60-90 percent.

For the Nikiski project, ORPC is partnering with local utility Homer Electric Association (HEA) to bring the power to market. HEA is already building a battery-storage system to accommodate more power input from intermittent resources, and when completed later this year, it will be able to save aside more than 90 MWh of surplus energy at a time for later delivery to the grid. This will allow the utility to incorporate more renewables and maintain reliability while cutting down on its fuel expenditures.

ORPC says that it is in talks with the fishing port of False Pass – which also runs its power grid on diesel, like many remote Alaskan communities – for the installation of a similar tidal energy project.

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South Korea announced plans for a demonstration project for the capture, transportation, and storage of carbon dioxide. The project, which involved eight Korean companies including Korea Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and the Korea National Oil Company along with government-sponsored research, is part of a broader plan to redeploy a decommissioned offshore gas field for the storage while converting to generate offshore wind in the area as part of a hydrogen initiative.

The project centers around the Donghae Gas Field, which is scheduled to end production in 2022. They plan to capture and transport 400,000 tons a year of carbon from industrial users for injection into the depleted wells starting in 2022. Korea has a goal of collecting, utilizing, and storing 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030. The plan is that industrial applications will use more than six million tons while the remaining four million tons will be treated through storage.

Korean National Oil is leading the project which will work with SK Energy to capture carbon from industrial applications. SK Innovation will acquire the technology to treat the CO2 while Korea Shipbuilding will participate in the transportation and storage. Korea Petroleum Corporation will utilize its experience in the operation of the Donghae Gas Field for 20 years, to inject the CO2 into the stratum of the decommissioned gas field.

Yang Soo-young, president of Korea Petroleum Corporation, said, “Oil companies are actively engaged in the era of decarbonization around the world. In particular, oil companies with expertise in deep underground strata are playing a leading role in the CCS business. As Korea National Oil Corporation promotes floating offshore wind power and CCS projects using the Donghae Gas Field, which will be terminated in 2022, it can reduce demolition costs, reduce investment costs, and actively participate in the decarbonization policy.”

Korea National Oil believes that the development of a mid-sized CCS integrated demonstration model using the Donghae gas field will play a key role in the process of deriving an optimal implementation model for the successful implementation of CCS projects.

To achieve Korea’s larger goals for the underground storage of carbon dioxide, Korea Petroleum will also be participating in a government research project designed to explore Korea’s continental shelf, including in the East Sea, to identify additional locations for the underground storage of CO2. Deep-sea exploration drilling is planned to find strata suitable for underground storage.

The other portion of the decommissioning of the gas field calls for the development of a 200 MW floating offshore wind project as part of the plan to develop 6GW of floating offshore wind power near Ulsan, Korea.

Another element of the plan that was announced earlier in May when Korea approved the feasibility study for the offshore wind farm includes the construction of a 100-megawatt hydrogen plant. Korea Shipbuilding and Hyundai Heavy Industries will develop the plant to produce blue hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture technology and green hydrogen from seawater using electricity generated from the floating offshore wind farm. Under the plan, Hyundai will establish a new business unit that will handle the production of hydrogen to be used both in the shipping industry and onshore transportation.

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Plans were announced for the development of Abu Dhabi’s first green ammonia production facility designed to create a steady supply of the emerging alternative fuel as well as build the regional and international markets for green ammonia. The plan calls for an investment of $1 billion for the plant which will use hydrogen and solar power to produce green ammonia for domestic use and export.

Helios Industry, a privately-owned special project company (SPV) established in the UAE, will construct the plant in collaboration with local and international partners. It will be built in two phases and when completed is projected to produce 200,000 tons of green ammonia annually from 40,000 tons of green hydrogen. The green ammonia plant will be powered by a dedicated 800-megawatt solar power plant that is also scheduled to be built in the region. The solar power plant will have a capacity of 100MW in phase 1. The plant will use the solar power to electrolyze water and split molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

Both the green ammonia facility and the power plant are scheduled to be developed within the Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (KIZAD), which is a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Ports. KIZAD is a master planned development that is created an extensive complex near the Khalifa Port and is integrated into the sea, air, road, and rail networks. The vision is for a large, port-integrated industrial zones that will become a hub for manufacturing, logistics, and trade.

Abdullah Al Hameli, Head of Industrial Cities & Free Zone Cluster, Abu Dhabi Ports, noted that the adoption of sustainability and green technology has gained significant traction within the region over the past few years. The creation of the plant they believe will support the development of the industrial zone and Abi Dhabi’s leadership in green energy.

According to Helios Industry, the new facility upon completion is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 600,000 tons annually, equivalent to the amount of pollution generated by roughly 140,000 vehicles if conventional methods are employed for ammonia production.

On Monday, Eastern Shipbuilding Group (ESG) held the keel authentication ceremony for the next U.S. Coast Guard Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), USCGC Chase. Admiral Karl Schultz, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-40), House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chair and ship sponsor, delivered remarks to mark the occasion.

“Here at Eastern we start each day with the recognition that we are building a new era of cutters for the young women and men of the United States Coast Guard who will sail in them on critical National Security missions for decades to come. From our thirteen hundred family members to your nearly 60,000 active duty, reserve, and civilian workforce . . . our pledge remains the same – these cutters will always get you home,” said ESG President Joey D’Isernia.

The cutter honors previous namesake vessels including those named after Salmon Portland Chase, former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, governor, and antislavery leader.

Image courtesy Adm. Karl Schultz / USCG

The keel-laying ceremony represents the start of a ship’s life by commemorating the assembly of the first modular construction units. Historically, to attest that the keel was properly laid, the shipbuilder would carve their initials into the keel. This practice is commemorated today by welding the ship’s sponsor’s initials into the keel authentication plate.

Last month, ESG was awarded a contract to begin construction of the third hull in the OPC series, the future USCGC Ingham, and to purchase long-lead-time materials for the fourth hull. The OPC – the Coast Guard’s largest single procurement program in history – fills a niche between the national security cutter, which is designed for long range open ocean missions, and the fast response cutter, which serves a patrol and SAR function closer to shore.

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In an effort to enhance the efficiency of its shipbuilding operations, and possibly develop new business opportunities, Italy’s Fincantieri signed a letter of intent with Italian robotics company Comau to develop robotic and other solutions for shipbuilding and other heavy construction applications.  The companies will work together to develop and test the new applications at Fincantieri’s shipyards.

The focus of the effort will be on the development of prototypes and the manufacturing of advanced robotics capable of handling steel welding projects first at the shipyard. Common in other industries, robotics has become a widely used tool in assembly line manufacturing handling tasks such as welding for the automotive industry. The partnership will draw on Comau’s experience with these applications. Comau, an industrial automatic and robotics company, is currently a part of automaker Stellantis and traces its origins to the 1970s developing robotics for the automotive industry.

According to the companies that have already begun work on developing a welding robot vehicle consisting of an anthropomorphic welding robot and a remote control tracked vehicle. Tests are scheduled to begin at the Fincantieri shipyards by the first half of 2022.

“This partnership is an important innovation for the shipbuilding industry,” said Fincantieri General Manager, Fabio Gallia. “Apart from improving the safety of workers and their ergonomic working conditions, these solutions will enable great progress in pursuing the competitiveness of our production system. Moreover, looking to the future, the possibility of developing projects together with Comau is a great opportunity to further broaden the Group’s range of competencies.”

Under the agreement between the companies, Fincantieri and Comau will be co-owners of the know-how and intellectual property generated while developing the new concepts. At a later stage, they will explore the possibility of marketing welding products both to the shipbuilding industry and other related industries based on the designs developed. For example, they said they believed the technologies could be applied in the production of large-size steel products for infrastructure and special works (e.g. continuous structures for suspension bridges, structures for large-size hoisting systems, products for special constructions).

The companies have also agreed to consider and examine new opportunities to create innovative solutions within the broader scope of a digital factory.

Comau became part of Stellantis as part of the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA, the owner of Peugeot. The company has been working to expand its applications into other industries while Stellantis announced that it expects to spinoff Comau in the future

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German shipbuilding association VSM is warning of the risk of an “irreversible loss” of skill in the country’s powerhouse marine equipment and shipyard sectors due to distortions in international competition. Without government intervention at the national and EU level, warned VSM, Germany’s yards run the risk of significant decline over the next decade.

Like others, German shipbuilders have been losing ground to Asian competitors for general-purpose merchant vessels for many years, and the sector has been sustained by specialization in cruise, yacht and defense contracts – so-called “complex shipbuilding” for highly-engineered vessels and high-end systems.

In recent years, Asian yards have begun to peel off European ro/ro and ferry orders as well, leaning on subsidies and “massive distortions of competition” to secure business. The same “protectionist tendencies” are also being seen in the equipment supply sector, VSM warned. This has significant implications for the German maritime economy as a whole, which accounts for about 200,000 direct jobs.

“As a German medium-sized company, you cannot counter strategic action by the Chinese state. That is why we need an active policy. With the previous [German government] framework conditions, there is a risk of irreversible loss of essential shipbuilding skills,” said Harald Fassmer, president of VSM and managing director of shipbuilder and supplier Fassmer.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the cruise industry shutdown have brought these vulnerabilities into focus, VSM said, because the disappearance of cruise ordering activity has made the absence of orders in other segments more evident.

“European shipbuilding has been losing market share for decades, because predatory competition is practiced with massive subsidies, especially in Asia, and Europe is not doing anything about it,” said Bernard Meyer, managing director of Meyer Werft. “That is why the question is now whether the civil shipbuilding industry in Germany and Europe will be able to survive to a significant extent in ten years’ time.”

To address the threat, VSM called for “a consistent response at the national and European level” and a fundamental rethink of the framework conditions for European shipbuilding, with the objective of restoring a level playing field.

“The European Union has the largest single maritime market in the world. The geography of our continent provides for an abundance of economic activities on and under the water. That is why we in Europe have the power to optimally use our entire range of maritime capabilities for growth and sustainability,” said VSM managing director Reinhard Lüken.

The warning comes several days in advance of a parliamentary hearing on the maritime economy, accompanied by the release of a German government report on the status of the sector. The report echoes VSM’s concerns, warning of a growing risk of Chinese state-backed competition. “Aggressive competitors from Asia threaten not only Germany as a maritime location, but Europe as a whole. In particular, the Chinese strategy of top subsidies threatens the cruise ship building market segment – as in the past with freight, container or tankers,” notes the report. “With the ‘Made-In-China 2025’ strategy, China is also aiming for the top position in global competition in high-tech shipbuilding.”

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Turbine manufacturer MingYang Smart Energy has launched the first floating offshore wind tower ever built in China. The unit has been fully assembled at the company’s factory in Yangjiang, Guangzhou, a small port city about 130 miles southwest of Hong Kong.

Movement control technology has a significant role in the development of viable offshore floating wind systems, MingYang said – particularly in environments subjected to typhoons and extreme weather, like the South China Sea. Like all of the company’s designs, the new floating turbine is built to be highly typhoon-resistant.

“The MySE5.5MW floating turbine is a great example of what we can achieve by combining our existing offshore expertise to shape the integrated fully coupled time-domain simulation and modelling of [the] turbine-floater-mooring system,” the company said in a statement.

The first prototype will be towed out and installed at the China Three Gorges Yangxi Shapa III offshore wind farm as a technology demonstrator for testing. It will operate alongside 31 of Yangjiang’s 6.5 megawatt bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines.

As of the end of 2020, Chinese utilities have built out about six gigawatts of offshore wind capacity – about 95 percent of the total in all of Asia, according to Rystad Energy. Local manufacturers like MingYang control the majority of the supply chain for Chinese offshore wind developments, the consultancy said.

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