Features: - Tanker Operator

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medium speed common rail engines from the manufacturer's
Augsburg works.
Earlier, Essberger had selected the new Turkish shipyard of Eregli to
construct an 8,400 dwt and three 5,300 dwt vessels. The larger vessel
is an IMO II type 124 m long, oil and chemical tanker fitted with
MarineLine coated tanks. Construction began on 26th November last
year under the supervision of Essberger and Bureau Veritas and the
vessel is due to be delivered in January 2009.
The three Ice Class 1A 5,300 dwt tankers will be fitted with
stainless steel cargo tanks and all will feature MAN prime movers.
They are due for delivery in September, December 2009 and April
2010 respectively.
As for the management contracts, these were for Svithoid Tankers'
three 3,400 dwt and two 4,500 dwt tankers. Essberger inspectors
travelled to an Estonian shipyard in Tallinn to take over the first vessel
for Svithoid. One 3,400 dwt tanker - Vedrey Thor - was chartered to
Fisher Everard, while the larger units will operate for Herning under a
long term charter.
Buelow explained that Essberger's philosophy was to continue to
operate specialist tankers of up to 10,000 dwt in partnership with the
oil and chemical majors on a mixture of timecharter and spot business
basis. The vessels normally operate in northern Europe, Baltic and
Mediterranean/Black Sea regions.
In 2004, Essberger bought Dutch chemical tanker operator Broere
from the Vopak group and formed the Broere/Essberger chemical
tanker pool. In April of this year, the operation was brought under the
banner of Essberger Tankers. The new vessels and all Essberger
vessels will be gradually renamed taking the Essberger suffix.
At the beginning of this year, Hugo Finlay was recruited to run
Essberger Tankers as managing director. He has had more than 40
years' experience in the tanker business having been employed at
senior level by Stolt Nielsen and Jo Tankers among others.
At present, the fleet flies the Dutch flag (Broere vessels), German
and Madeira flags - the latter as a European flag. As for seafarer
training, Essberger uses various establishments in Poland, China, the
Philippines and in-house seminars are regularly held. On board
training will be continued, Buelow said. The company employs
European masters on its tankers, mainly from Holland, Germany,
Poland and the Baltic States.
The seafarers are employed on a two month on, two month off
rotation, which helps to ensure a good retention rate, Buelow believed.
Being a family owned company, it was easier to bring the seafarers
into a family type working atmosphere, he thought.
In Europe, Essberger has its own crewing agency in Gdynia, while
in Singapore, the company owns the crewing agency -Transocean Ship
Management and has a partnership in a Manila-based training centre,
which is equipped with modern simulators, including bridges. These
can be attached to engine control rooms and a small engine. The Asian
facilities are mainly used for the bulk and cement carriers managed by
Essberger, as well as for ratings on tankers (Filipinos).
Essberger has set up a safety and vetting department in Hamburg
and Buelow said that he was "quite happy" with the TMSA audits.
Similar to the vessels, Essberger has bought the shipmanagement
activities closer to home by dispensing with the old shipmanagement
company Transocean to better reflect the Essberger brand.
Buelow explained that the shipmanagement arm will only look at
third party management business for special projects, such as
newbuildings. It was not Essberger's intention to become a fully
fledged third party shipmanagement concern.
He is an active member of BIMCO, IPTA, the VDR and sits on the
August/September 2008 � TANKEROperator
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