Pressure on Heavy Lift Sector Sees Intercontinental Cooperation Between Ocean Carriers

NETHERLANDS – SOUTH KOREA – The pressure on operators in the ocean heavy lift industry sector can be gauged by the recent insolvency of one of the industry's best known names, Hansa, and now BigLift Shipping, a part of the Dutch Spliethoff group, and Busan based Chung Yang Shipping, have agreed to cooperate, pooling their four heavy transport vessels under the BigLift brand.

The two companies say that the two pairs of ships, BigLift Barentsz and BigLift Baffin and CY Interocean I and CY Interocean II, are better positioned to meet the future demands in the LNG, Oil and Gas markets and the renewable market, adhering to the highest QHSE standards.

The vessels are very similar with respect to deck space, however the CY vessels have a less draft, enabling BigLift and Chung Yang to handle an even wider range of port locations in respect of water depth and quay heights. With the combined fleet the two companies say they can offer more flexibility and availability to a market of challenging heavy transport projects.

The four vessels have own gear lifting capacity as well as RoRo access and the two heavy BigLIft transport vessels are two identical, state of the art Module Carriers (MC). With their large 125 x 42 metre deck they increase BigLift’s shipping capabilities for RoRo cargoes up to about 16,000 tonnes a piece. The CY ships have principally been used of late in the offshore energy sector, with contracts from the like of COSCO.

Both Chung Yang and BigLift Shipping will provide technical and operational support in the early stages of future projects, providing customers with engineered and tailor-made solutions in the various project phases and details of each type of vessel can be seen here for the MC class and here for the CY type.

Photo: CY Interocean l shows her carrying capability.