MPI Offshore shipments to China from Norway, UK and the rest of the world

MPI (Resolution Shipping)

This project was a watershed moment for Johnson Partners Ltd. Up until this point, we had undertaken several small-scale projects but this project was a large, extensive project that brought our experience to another level completely. It called on all of Bernie’s skills and expertise to organise and manage.

This project began in February 2010 and continued into early 2011 and involved an unprecedented amount of planning and co-ordination between suppliers, hauliers, shipping lines and all parties involved to ensure that deliveries were made with the optimum ability to hit the tight deadlines as described in further detail below.
 

2 new build ships
The client had commissioned the new build of 2 jack up vessels (Adventure and Discovery) for operations in the renewable energy market. Although the vessels were built in China, a significant amount of the equipment for the vessels was built in mainland Europe and Scandinavia and had to be shipped out to the shipyard in Qidong near Shanghai. The client had commitments to the shipyard to have the equipment in position to an agreed time frame and from a chartering point of view for the completion of the vessels.

One of the vessels had charterers waiting for the completion so the cost implication of being late, was a major financial issue. As a result of these commitments and the possible financial penalties for being late, the client was reluctant to leave the shipping of the equipment to the suppliers. They wanted complete control of the shipping and needed a freight forwarder to co-ordinate the delivery of the equipment so that they weren’t relying on a third-party. Ian Wright, the New Build Manager for the project approached Bernie to oversee this role. Our brief, apart from moving the equipment to China, was to work with the client and take an active role in the progressing, expediting and liaison with the suppliers. The main overriding objectives were to establish the importance and urgency of equipment as it became available for shipment and to ensure the most suitable modes of shipment and routings were used.

Cargo was shipped from various points in Scandinavia, UK and the European continent and on a number of occasions arrangements had to be made to collect cargo by road vehicles and to arrange safe and secure loading and lashing at off-site premises. There have been numerous shipments over a period of about 18 months of all types of equipment that go into building a ship!!!

The main out of gauge cargo included:

6 engines per vessel manufactured by Rolls Royce
Each engine was 7 x 2.3 x 3m, 40 tonnes shipment was on heavy tested flat racks.
Shipment was from Bergen in Norway on normal container vessels. The recognised way to do this would be as a breakbulk shipment as this would generally be more cost-effective to do it this way. However, the transit times for normal container vessels are shorter and also the transit times do tend to be less unpredictable than breakbulk routings where the port rotation is more subject to change. This is why the client preferred to send these on normal container vessels.

Thrusters.
There were 6 Azimuth Thrusters (a type of propeller for manoeuvring the vessel into position) for each vessel, manufactured by Rolls Royce in Helsinki, Finland. The sizes varied from 3.3 x 3.1 x 3.4m to 5 x 4 x 3.6m with weights of around 31 tonnes each. Again, because of delivery commitments, we shipped these on heavy tested flat racks and on standard container vessels.

1 x 50 tonne crane per vessel manufactured by Liebherr in the UK.
Shipment was made by a combination of Break Bulk, Flat racks (out of gauge on L, W & Ht) and standard containers. In order to meet the deadlines required, each crane was shipped on a standard container vessel.

Switchgear
The Electrical Switchgear was manufactured in Poland.

Whilst the second shipment was on schedule and moved in 4 x 40’ GP containers with a weight of 25 tonnes, the first shipment was running behind schedule so the client decided to airfreight the whole consignment. This of course is a lot of equipment to airfreight and extra provisions were required to send this on a freighter rather than a passenger flight because of the weights involved.