A decision has been made to break up the ship in the
northern Italian port, which, although not the cheapest, is the best equipped
in the country for the job
The wreck of the Costa Concordia will be broken up in
three stages following a controversial decision to hand the job to the Genoa
Port Authority.
Although no official announcement has been made,
leaks to the Italian press confirmed by TradeWinds sources reveal that Genoa
will be officially appointed in an announcement scheduled for 16 June.
As TradeWinds reported prior to last week’s meeting
to select a shipbreaker, there was mounting pressure from politicians in the
provinces of Tuscany and Genoa to keep the work in Italy.
With at least 100 jobs to be created by the
demolition project, competition for the business was intense.
The decision apparently had the support of Costa
Cruises Group, although underwriters preferred the option of taking the wreck
to Turkey, some EUR 60m ($82m) cheaper than the EUR 100m reported cost of
dismantling the ship in Italy.
With the wreck removal and other insurance bills for
the 114,000-gt Costa Concordia (built 2006) already running at $1.7bn, insurers
are under pressure to keep costs down.
The Genoa deal almost certainly means that the
Boskalis-controlled, 117,000-ton capacity semi-submersible heavylift vessel
Dockwise Vanguard (built 2012) will no longer be used to move the wreck.
Instead, salvors Titan Salvage and Micoperi will
manage the logistics of slowly towing the wreck by tugs on a five-day trip to
Genoa after it has been refloated later this month.
The mayor of Tuscany has already complained that the
five-day journey to Genoa is too risky and environmentally hazardous compared
to the one-day voyage to the closer Tuscan port of Piombino.The potential impact
is made worse because the vessel will be moved at the height of the tourist
season.
But Genoa’s main advantage is that the port’s
facilities, while not purpose-built for shipbreaking, are more suitable than
Piombino, which would have needed considerable infrastructure investment to
handle the project.
It is understood Genoa’s plan is to take the Costa
Concordia to the Voltri terminal where, under phase one of the operations, the
cruiseship’s internal structure will be removed to reduce the vessel’s draught
from its current 18 metres to 15 metres.
From then on, the vessel can be moved alongside a
quay where the bridge and other sections of superstructure can be removed,
again decreasing the ship’s draught.
In the final phase, when the hull has been reduced to
a suitable size, it will be floated into shiprepair facilities to be broken up.
By finally breaking up the hull in a repair dock,
Genoa will be able to argue that it is complying with new European regulation
on shiprecycling introduced this year.
In a separate recycling development, Ghana has become
the second state after Norway to ratify the Hong Kong Convention on the Safe
and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.
France, which began the process of ratification, is
also expected to shortly follow the European Council’s decision earlier this
year to encourage member states to ratify the convention.
Source: trade winds
news. 6 June 2014
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