H?egh Autoliners lengthening 12 car carriers

H÷egh Autoliners lengthening 12 car carriers Norway’s H'egh Autoliners has placed contracts with two Korean shipbuilders to 'jumbo-ize' 12 of its core fleet pure car truck carriers that will add deck space for an extra 15,000 car equivalent units (CEU).
   Ten existing car carriers will be sliced mid-ship with the two sections floated apart and a new 28 meter-long section, with 12 car decks, added. The whole operation will take less than two months per ship to complete.
   The operation will result in the following changes to the vessels:
   ' Increasing length to 228 meters from 200 meters.
   ' Car deck area to 67,000 square meters from 54,000 square meters.
   ' CEU to 7,600 from 6,100.
   ' Speed to 20.5 knots from about 19.5 knots.
   Hyundai Mipo Dockyards will carry out the operation on the 10 existing vessels at its Hyundai Vinashin Shipyard in Vietnam. In addition, two newbuildings on order from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd. (DSME) will be lengthened during the building process. All the vessels will be elongated before the end of 2009.
   'With a steep increase in cargo volumes in our Far East trade systems, we have reached a scale where we can utilize larger vessels,” said Niels Ronald Bugge, H'egh’s executive vice president commercial. “By lengthening 12 vessels we can offer our customers additional transportation capacity more rapidly in a period of growing demand. For each vessel, the extension will have minor effect on vessel performance and the contribution from the added capacity will be significant.'