TTS Review 6 - TTS Group ASA

Wallenius, for example, has taken a big interest in green issues,
and now others are starting to follow.”
Demand for car carriers is spreading around the world. Last
year, for example, 45 new car carriers were added to the TTS
order book with deliveries to vessels constructed at yards in
Korea, Japan, China and Croatia. In addition to this TTS won its
first orders for cargo access equipment for car carrier ships to
be built in Vietnam. The vessels, twelve of which are being built
by state-owned Vinashin on behalf of Ray Car Carriers and
Höegh Autolines, will be the first Vietnam-built car carriers to
include RoRo equipment. Deliveries of equipment for the new
ships started early in 2008, and the contracts will be completed
in 2011. “Vietnamese yards are new to building car carriers, and
we are expecting a lot more business from that market,” says
Ericsson.
A healthy market for ferry services
Although the passenger shipping industry might not seem the
most dynamic of sectors, there are in fact areas of high growth,
says TTS Ships Equipment’s sales manager Björn Rosén. And the
growth of these niches is helping TTS drive its own dry cargo
handling businesses forward.
Rosén says that, in the important ferry services market, the
key has been the development of the RoPax vessel concept.
Traditional RoRo ferries, designed to carry large numbers of
passengers and their cars across relatively short sea crossings,
have become difficult to justify for operators, because their
passenger business is highly seasonal and competition from low-
RoPax
cost airlines has transformed the way people travel. In season,
though, strong demand for passenger ferry travel still exists, and
there is demand for cargo capacity all year round. The solution
has been to build ships that can re-balance their loads, offering
more passenger capacity when there is demand, but being able
to serve largely as truck ferries for the rest of the year.
This concept has been successful around northern Europe,
and the Mediterranean area. And TTS solutions have dominated,
especially in the Baltic market. For example, Viking Line’s fast
passenger/car ferry scheduled for delivery in April 2008
features a full complement of TTS cargo access equipment.
“After the Estonia tragedy in 1994, there was naturally a
great focus on improving the safety of the bow part of vessels,”
says Rosén. “And our patented folding frame solution has been
dominant in the RoPax sector. The folding frame technology
means that the ship will be watertight even if the bow door fails,
which has obvious implications for safety. But it is also a very
space-efficient solution, so the operators don’t lose valuable
capacity on the car decks.”
In recent years, most new RoPax vessels built for the Baltic
sector have been equipped with TTS solutions. “There are
currently four Tallink vessels serving the Tallinn-Stockholm and
Tallinn-Helsinki routes, each using our equipment. Another will
be delivered this summer, with the final ship in the current
contract scheduled for completion in 2009,” says Rosén. “The
important thing about many of these vessels is that they use our
hoistable car deck technology, which means the operators can
switch between car and truck capacity very easily.”
Picture by kind permission of Aker Yards
TTS Review • April 2008 9