Feature 3| SE ASIA


hits the Solbian Marine Solar Panels. Te furled Mainsail sheets are translucent and may also incorporate Fresnel film. Tis light concentrating sail option raises the efficiency of the solar cell from 22% to perhaps 35%,” explained Sauter. Solar and wind power are only half the


story with the Wärtsilä LLC Duel Fuel Hybrid Power equal to 10MW output providing the top up power to the clean energy systems. According to Sauter key benefits of Wärtsilä’s DF engines and LLC (Low Loss Concept) are that they offer high efficiency, low exhaust gas emissions, flexibility of fuel use and fuel economy over the entire engine operating range.


Capital costs for Deliverance run at


around 10-15% higher than a conventional vessel which operates with a 30MW output, however, MHI’s Bubble Hull design improves efficiency, significantly reducing the amount of power needed. Podded propulsion allows the layout of the engine room to be flexible with the absence of a drive shaſt connecting the propellers. “Te ship [design] is conventional in every


way,” said Sauter, adding, “When I looked at the new Panama Canal locks the scale conformed to a far better hydro-dynamic shape, longer, thinner, stretched and not so deep, it allowed for better efficiency, the configuration of the locks lend themselves to a more advanced design,” he said.


At 330,000dwt Deliverance is a cost


effective workhorse sized vessel which would normally cost around US$180 million, the power saving appliances on Deliverance mean, however, that the initial cost is pushed up to around US$200 million, but with savings of up to 75% in fuel consumption and pollution costs the lifetime expenditure for the vessel is significantly reduced. “Maritime engineering is very backward,


so it is very easy to make 75% savings in emissions, it is not so easy in the car and aircraſt markets,” said Sauter. He went on to say that other closed ships, such as car carriers, bulk carriers and ro-ro vessels could also make significant emissions reductions through fuel savings. NA


Yards cling to niches in financial crisis


Speculative shipbuilding in South East Asia has ground to a halt as yards and banks rein in their exposure to the maritime industry.


M


any European owners used to visit SE Asia looking for vessels nearing completion that they


could buy up at reasonable rates. Tat was before financial calamity hit the global economic system. Following the financial firestorms of 2008


and again this year speculative building has all but ended, explains Francis Tang, Wärtsilä’s general manager ship sales and project development in Singapore. Yards have retreated into the niche


markets that they can rely on for business and in SE Asia, as in many other regions, that means the offshore business. Wärtsilä has continued to design and supply newbuildings for the regional market, including the company’s biggest current project, an 85m multi-purpose supply vessel. Te 4000dwt ship is being built in Nanchong, China, for a Malaysian owner and is due for delivery in the first quarter 2013. Wärtsilä has provided the design, engine


gensets, thrusters and propulsion system for the vessel, “so it is optimised very well,” said Tang, adding that, “Te engines will meet Tier II regulatory requirements from the international Maritime Organization [IMO]”. Typical of the types of vessel now being


built for the SE Asian market, Tang says that speculative shipbuilding in the region has


38


come to an end for the next five to 10 years. “In a general sense the economy has


affected business [in the SE Asian region] in the good days, pre-2008, there was a lot of speculative shipbuilding, designers and yards would talk to brokers and try and anticipate which ships would be in demand in one or two years time – then they would build a series of six or eight ships and when they were close to delivery owners would come and buy the vessels,” said Tang. Curbs on funding from banks to both


the yards and some owners have forced the industry to contract. “Banks want to see that owners have a charterer in hand before they release funding,” said Tang. He went on to say that as the financial crisis


has engulfed Europe fewer European owners have been seen in SE Asia looking for vessels. “I heard of one case where a European owner was ready to contract a yard for a vessel, but the owner’s bank did not recognise the yard’s bank”. Effectively the owner’s bank did not believe that the yard’s financial backer was capable of meeting the refund guarantees and so the deal collapsed. According to Tang there is a possibility


that some of the smaller regional yards may not survive as the banks tighten their lending criteria stifling the business, causing a natural re-alignment of the market, he said.


In some ways the economics of


shipbuilding have hit Wärtsilä’s Vietnam operations too,


though the cocktail of


problems in this market are more than mere financial scarcity. As the company’s general manager for sales and support, Jeffry Especkerman points out the Vietnamese economy is going through some difficulties with the currency, the dong, trading high and interest rates and inflation also high. “We have to keep things ticking over until shipbuilding comes back,” he explains. However, Mr Especkerman does not


expect much to change in Vietnam before 2015 when the “WTO [World Trade Organization] rules kick in”. Subsidies to industry and import duties and other economic mechanisms that protect the local market from competition will be scrapped within five to seven years of Vietnam’s 2007 accession to the WTO. Wärtsilä is managing to maintain its


presence in Vietnam with a series of small projects designed for the domestic offshore market, including an anchor handler design, a recent tugboat delivery. Shipyards are still building vessels,


but it is at a much slower pace than the pre-crisis days of 2008. “Eventually the shipbuilding business will turn around,” added Especkerman. NA


The Naval Architect January 2012


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