South Shields based Solar Solve Marine has received an order from Korea for four ship-sets of their brand leading SOLASAFE® roller sunscreens. The screens are to be installed at the navigation bridge windows of four very large container carriers currently under construction at Daewoo’s DSME Okpo shipyard on Geoje Island.
With a length of 366 mts, a beam of 48.8 mts and depth of 30 mts the vessels will all be 152,700 dwt., and whilst not the biggest in the world, they will still be classed as mega carriers with a maximum capacity of around 13,100 teu.
Hyundai Hope, the first vessel in the series, is due for delivery in March this year with the other 3 following at 2 monthly intervals thereafter. They will be named Hyundai Drive (May 2014), Hyundai Victory (July 2014) and Hyundai Pride (August 2014) and the quartet will join around 60 other container carriers in Hyundai Merchant Marine’s burgeoning fleet, which also includes 21 Oil tankers, 7 LNG carriers plus general cargo, ore and coal carriers.
Hyundai Merchant Marine and DSME are both long time customers of Solar Solve Marine, going back 20 years or more and appreciate the benefits of the protection that SOLASAFE® screens provide for the people working in a ship’s wheelhouse. With a life expectancy of more than 10 years it will be a long time before the owners need to become concerned about that aspect of crew fatigue management again.
John Lightfoot, Solar Solve Marine’s chairman said, “This order is great news for Solar Solve and we acknowledge the effort put in by Samgong Co. Ltd, our Korean based Distributor, who won the order for us. It’s amazing to think that although Hyundai Heavy Industries own the world’s biggest ship building yard, which is only 60 miles from the Daewoo facility and does build container ships; one of the Hyundai chaebol’s associated enterprises has placed this order with a shipbuilding competitor. Not that we mind of course because both yards are significant builders of top-quality vessels and they both install Solar Solve Marine products.”
