SALVAGE: MSC Flaminia finds refuge in Germany

After more than five weeks of negotiations the fire-ravaged boxship MSC Flaminia has finally been granted a port of refuge at the newly-constructed German deep sea container port of Wilhelmshaven.

However, prior to this the partially burnt-out ship will need to pass a safety inspection today at a location 40 nautical miles off Lands End to ensure she is safe and stable enough to proceed under tow through the English Channel – the busiest seaway in the world. 

At four knots the passage will take more than a week and assuming all goes well, once off the German coast the vessel will be anchored in the German Bight, approximately 12 nautical miles off Heligoland, where it will then be subject again to an inspection by dangerous goods specialists, chemists and a team of salvage experts. 

If it is once again determined safe, the MSC Flaminia will be towed to Wilhelmshaven – Germany’s only deep sea container port – at Jade Bight on the North Sea coast. 

Edited from http://felixstowedocker.blogspot.com.br/2012/08/msc-flaminia-wilhelmshaven-confirmed.html

PIRACY | Germany wants armed guards on Europe ships: official

LONDON (Reuters) – Germany plans to lobby other European Union countries to allow the deployment of private armed guards on their merchant ships in high-risk areas as a piracy crisis escalates, ministry officials said.

But analysts said the initiative was likely to face legal and practical difficulties.

Somali piracy is costing the world economy billions of dollars a year, and international navies are stretched to combat the menace in the Indian Ocean due to the vast distances involved. In desperation, more shipping companies are considering deploying private armed guards on their vessels.

The German government is looking into changing the country’s weapons laws to allow security personnel to bear firearms on ships in high-risk areas. It could also certify those private security companies that could be used on merchant vessels, a government official said.

“Our goal is to develop a coordinated approach to be presented at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting in September, and EU governments are the main partners to bring on board,” said Jan Gerd Becker-Schwering with the German economy ministry. “To go this alone would not be beneficial.”

The European Union said allowing private armed guards on merchant vessels was a decision to be made on a national level, adding that ships should have best management practices (BMP) in place, including measures to prevent pirates from getting on board and to protect crew members.

“The implementation and execution of these BMPs, however, is the responsibility of the ship owners,” an EU spokesman said. “These private security contractors operate under the law of the flag state.”

Separately the IMO said such a move was up to national governments but warned of a potential escalation in violence.

“IMO does not endorse the use of privately contracted armed security personnel on board ships … and operators should take into account the possible escalation of violence,” the U.N.’s maritime agency said.

POTENTIAL SETBACKS

J. Peter Pham, with the Atlantic Council think tank, said the German plan could encounter legal setbacks, both domestically and abroad.

“Despite the apparent reasonableness of the German proposal, it will face several hurdles,” Pham said. “It needs to pass both houses of the German parliament, where there will be opposition from the left, which tends to look askance on mercenaries.”

Pham said it could prove difficult to convince foreign port authorities to allow armed groups into harbours.

“Even if Chancellor (Angela) Merkel’s government gets the necessary laws enacted, it will be an uphill battle to convince the authorities in ports to allow the security teams in, much less to get other countries, especially in Europe, to follow.”

International Chamber of Shipping Secretary General Peter Hinchliffe said the German plan was helpful in setting a precedent for approving armed guards in flags where they were not currently allowed.

“But it must not create a mechanism for governments to abrogate their responsibility under UNCLOS to protect trade routes,” he said, referring to an international convention that tasks nation states with tackling piracy on the high seas.

German ship owners’ association VDR said private armed guards were a “second-best solution” to deploying police or military forces. The German government has ruled this out.

“Using sovereign forces would not pose financial and capacity problems, and we could only use them on ships that sail under the German flag,” Becker-Schwering said.

Ships are often registered under other flags than that of the ship’s owner in order to avoid taxes and regulations of the owner’s country.

MARITIME | Woman sailor dies in Gorch Fock training accident

 

The 52 year-old "Gorch Fock"

A 25-year-old woman cadet has been killed after a fall from the rigging of the German navy’s famous training ship, the Gorch Fock, officials said on Monday.

The sailor from Lower Saxony fell during a stop in the Brazilian port of Salvador de Bahia, crashing from the vessel’s rigging onto the deck and dying of her injuries in a nearby hospital, the navy said.

The young woman’s family in the county of Holzminden has been notified. She had been in the German military for three and a half years and belonged to the Mürwik naval academy in Flensburg.

The accident occurred during a climbing exercise, but exact circumstances remain unclear and the investigation has not been concluded, the navy said.

The three-mast barque set sail from Kiel on August 20 with 229 sailors on board for a training mission in South America set to be the longest in the ship’s history. It is expected home in June 2011.

The death was the sixth on board the ship since it was built in 1958, a Navy spokesperson said.

The last deadly accident on the ship occurred in September 2008, when another female officer candidate, 18, fell overboard during her night watch on the North Sea.

Source: The Local, 2010.11.08

Container crisis: German shipowners face perfect storm

To me, this article by Robert Wright, Transport Correspondent, FT.com has a definite connection to the ones which dealt with MSC ‘s accusation that shippers triggered the container freight rate crisis and Maersk’s first-ever annual loss after 105 years.

For that reason, and for the focus on the damage this crisis is causing to ordinary people, I think the text is worth reading.

Thomas Mann would recognise a great deal in the office of a contemporary north German shipowner. The air of genteel calm, the model boats and the continuing family control of many would be recognisable to the writer of Buddenbrooks, the saga of a 19th-century Lübeck shipowning family.

Many shipowners have offices by the Elbe in Hamburg, still enjoying – unusually in an era of remote, industrial container ports – views of passing vessels.

Yet most north German shipowners now run global businesses, not the regional operations Mann described. They control 35 per cent of the world’s container vessels, managing many of the ships that facilitated China’s export boom of the past decade. They deal with Taiwanese or Chilean shipping lines or Korean shipyards as readily as Thomas Buddenbrook dealt with trading partners across the Baltic in Riga.

As a result, northern Germany faces the biggest storm ever to hit container shipping. The prosperity of ordinary citizens, several large banks and even federal states is in peril, alongside that of well-heeled shipowners.

The question is how far the region’s state governments – and Germany’s federal government – can or should protect the sector from a crisis that, in the Buddenbrooks’ time, it would have had to withstand on its own.

“We see the effects of the global economic and financial crisis,” Axel Gedaschko, senator for economics in Hamburg’s state government, told the Marine Money ship finance conference in the city last week. “Maybe you can sense them more in northern Germany than anywhere else.”

Most German owners, rather than finding customers and organising schedules themselves, charter vessels long-term to Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company and other container ship operators. However, the operators started to terminate expiring contracts when container volumes and prices collapsed in October 2008. Fees paid when charters are renewed are far lower than before, and hundreds of ships remain out of use.

Ordinary Germans are suffering through investments in KG funds – tax-efficient companies owned by the shipowning companies and investors from the professional classes. Funds are increasingly asking shareholders for fresh money to fund ships’ storage. Many have had to sell ships or have collapsed after investors refused.

For banks, a glut of pending ship orders represents a still fiercer gathering storm. Regional institutions, especially HSH Nordbank, the world’s biggest shipping bank, controlled by the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, provided lending for an ordering binge during container shipping’s 2001-08 boom. Some ships were ordered speculatively, without arranged charters and have no immediate prospect of employment. Almost all the obligations to pay the tens of billions of euros due to shipyards look like ending up with the banks.

Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein have provided €3bn ($4.1bn, £2.7bn) in fresh capital to HSH Nordbank and €10bn in loan guarantees, but further support is likely to be necessary.

Most involved are trying to “kick the can down the road”, as one participant at the Hamburg forum described efforts to delay ship deliveries, revise loan agreements and take other action to postpone a crunch.

The closest brush with catastrophe came last May, when Hamburg shipowners and HSH Nordbank rescued CSAV, a Chilean container line that had chartered 90 ships from north German owners and almost collapsed.

Jochen Döhle, a partner in Peter Döhle Schiffsfahrt, one of the largest shipowners, rejects complaints the deal propped up an unhealthy company. “Isn’t it a positive sign that shipping has learnt from the mistake of the Lehman collapse?” he asks.

Yet few in northern Germany believe the region can absorb the tens of billions of euros in value being destroyed. Peter Döhle and Claus-Peter Offen, two of the biggest shipowners, last year applied to the federal government for loan guarantees. They withdrew after being told they would be rejected.

Mr Gedaschko believes the many southern Germans in the federal government have failed to grasp shipping’s economic importance. He would like to see state aid to shipowners and guarantees to back up KG funds’ bank borrowing. Six north German states will travel to Berlin this month to discuss possible aid.

“We think we need two to three years’ backing up of this industry and after this time the industry can help themselves,” he says.

Whatever support is forthcoming, the region’s powerful shipowning tradition and expertise will keep the sector alive in some form. A slow decline like that of the Buddenbrook family’s business is unlikely. Future executives will have to learn painful lessons, however. They will need to behave more like the sober patriarchs of the Buddenbrooks clan than flightier, younger members.