Construction begins on Chipolbrok’s new ship

On Monday, 12 April 2021, at the Chengxi Shipyard Co., Ltd. in Jiangyin, the construction of a ship ordered by the China-Poland Shipbuilding Association – Chipolbrok – was inaugurated with the traditional burning of metal plates.

During the ceremony, Maciej Lepicki, Managing Director of Chipolbrok and Lu Ziyou, President of Chengxi Shipyard, gave speeches expressing their mutual appreciation and evaluating the project as very important for the shipyard and Chipolbrok. Among the guests at the ceremony were representatives from CP, the shipyard, Polish Register of Shipping (PRS), DNV (the ship is being built under PRS supervision in the “dual class” system – dual class PRS and DNV), the leasing company and the design office.

Apparently, the physical construction began with the first cut of sheets from nominally the third unit in the series – with the shipyard construction number CX0698 (IMO No 9931563).
The others bear the build symbols CX0696 (IMO No 9930909), CX0697 (IMO No 9931551) and CX0699 (IMO No 9930911).

They are conventional heavy-lift multi-purpose vessels (HL MPP).
Each vessel in the series has a deadweight of 62,000 tonnes and is PRS class *KM DRY CARGO SHIP ACC (942) HC/E CG IWS AUT ECO REC ECO BWM).

The shipowner has ordered a total of four such multipurpose vessels, capable of carrying heavy and bulky cargoes as well as containers.

According to IHS Markit’s global fleet and shipbuilding order database – the delivery dates for the individual vessels are as follows: CX0696 – December 2021; CX0697 – March 2022, CX0698 – August 2022 and CX0699 – November 2022, but at least some of these may be revised. The Polish Register of Shipping (PRS) gives the handover date for units built under the supervision of this classification society as “scheduled for the end of 2022”.

Supervision on the part of PRS is carried out by the Head Office in Gdansk for the consideration and approval of classification documentation and by a team of inspectors from the PRS facility in Shanghai for the supervision of the construction of the vessels and the supervision of the production of Chinese-made materials and equipment.

For the Chengxi shipyard, this is the first order for multipurpose vessels intended for the carriage of special, heavy and bulky cargoes. It has so far mainly built bulk carriers.

The 62,000t vessels will be the largest in Chipolbrok’s fleet and in the history of the shipping company.

At the moment of commissioning, they will also become the third largest series of ships among Polish shipowners. They will be surpassed only by panamax / kamsarmax class bulk carriers of Chinese and Japanese construction owned by the Polish Steamship Company (about 80-82 thousand tons of carrying capacity).

Chipolbrok, headquartered in Shanghai, was established by the governments of the People’s Republic of China and the PRC in 1951 and began operations operating four vessels. The last time the joint venture ordered new ships was eight years ago, when it contracted Yangzijiang Shipbuilding to build four vessels of 37,000t each.

rel. PBS/ PortalMorski.pl

Photos: PRS