Caterpillar Marine - Marine Engines Caterpillar

MV “Ville de Mijo” was the first ship of shipping company Klingenberg,
driven by a MaK engine
to an understanding on a partnership
basis.
This human aspect was certainly significant
and is also reflected in the fact
that Armin Klingenberg was very familiar
with life on board ships, probably
more than almost any other owner –
and this is of more than merely anecdotal
importance. He was continually
going along on board, not just to gain
experience but as a real representative
of his company. That enabled him to
make contacts and acquire knowledge
from which he still benefits today. There
is nothing you can really tell him about
his business. Anyone who knows him
also knows that he particularly enjoys
assuming the very important job of cook
for the entire crew. „Everyone always ate
their fill, with three hot meals a day, and
everyone found the food tasted good,“
he relates about his own achievements
in this area. However, he keeps
quiet about whether produce from his
chicken farm „Bielefelder Kennhühner“,
which he also looked after with
loving care, landed in the pot or the pan
on these occasions. But, as Klingenberg
recalls a little wistfully, „at that time,
the ships stayed longer in port, which
offered much more opportunity to look
after the crews. In those years, we even
had our own football team.“
Entry into container shipping
In the second half of the 1970s,
German coaster agents also began to
enter the container shipping sector. An
increasing number of container feeder
ships and also larger units of up to 8,000
tdw were ordered. Klingenberg, meanwhile
sole owner of Albert Hauschild,
followed this trend with his own keen
instinct for market developments and
in 1986 ordered his first containership
from the yard Nobiskrug. This became
the „Thies“ (2), which with a capacity of
7,500 tdw could carry 580 TEU.
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Towards the end of the 1980s, the
shipping sector had overcome a low in
freight rates and there were clear signs
of a container boom. Armin Klingenberg
recognised this as a great opportunity.
It lay in his energetic nature,
rejecting all compromise, tackling what
had to be done, to rise to this challenge.
He was one of the first German shipowners
to place newbuildings in China
in 1991 after the gradual opening of
the Chinese market. „It‘s still almost
incredible how difficult that was at
that time. Neither the Chinese partners
nor I myself had any experience with
financing or the many other things
that were all somehow still in a state
of flux then. But both sides wanted to
see it through, and things worked out
somehow. „Just how, you might ask me
today? Everything was virgin territory,
but we succeeded. And so we became
a pioneer for other German shipping
lines. The result is clearly evident in the
number of newbuilding orders placed
after us.“ Klingenberg Bereederungs-
und Befrachtungs OHG was then
founded on January 1st 1995.
First-rate equipment is vital
Armin Klingenberg is very familiar
with the Chinese shipbuilding industry.
He has already had ten vessels built in
China and has another four still under
construction. He did not want to disclose
any further plans at the time of
the anniversary.
Right from the beginning, Klingenberg
put great priority on having mostly
German equipment installed in all his
ship newbuildings in China. He notes
that „today that’s already routine. It‘s
a really first-rate investment, and the
resulting reliability pays off in the long
run“. He cites as only one example MaK
engines from Kiel, on which he has relied
for a long time. The first vessel he had
equipped with these was the „Ville de
Mijo“, delivered in 1993 by MaWei Shipyard
in Fuzhou (China) and meanwhile
sold to another owner. This 5,684 gt/599
TEU containership with its own cargohandling
gear was specially strengthened
for handling heavy cargo. The vessel‘s
propulsion plant was a MaK engine
of type 9 M 453 with an output of 3,300
kW at 600/min, providing a speed of
14.5 knots. As shipowner, Klingenberg
was very satisfied with this choice, and
he equipped all his further newbuildings
with MaK engines for the main propulsion
plant. Four of these are still in service,
and four more have been ordered in
China. They all have MaK M 43 engines
for the main propulsion system.
MV “Ilona”, built in Wuhan, China, providing a container capacity of 847 TEU at a
deadweight of 11 000 t