UK: Port of Tyne Expects Docking of Its Largest Vessel Ever

The coal ship ‘Alam Penting’ is set to smash all records when she arrives on the Tyne from New Orleans this Thursday. At 229 metres long the ship is the largest cargo vessel ever to berth at the Port of Tyne, and carrying 75,000 tonnes of coal the biggest volume ever handled on the river, plus it will set a new record for the deepest draft of 12.8 metres.

The Port of Tyne has just completed an intensive dredging campaign, deepening the river to 13 metres at its main operational berths, putting the Port in the league for deepest Ports in the UK and Europe and making the River Tyne deeper than ever before.

In the past 2 weeks there has been a succession of increasingly deep coal carrying vessels visiting the Port. First the Harmony Express, then the Bariloche and the Alam Penting which is deeper again.

Steven Harrison, Chief Operating Officer at the Port of Tyne says: “Deepening the river is essential to enable the Port of Tyne to compete against other European ports and continue to expand to accommodate large fully laden panamax ships.

“The industry trend is for large ships to carry larger cargos, this provides economies of scale for customers importing and exporting goods. The Port has made significant strategic investment in excess of £5 million in order to deepen the river and to meet this demand.”

Handling such large volumes of cargo requires a huge amount of skill and experience, and has involved a big team effort at the Port of Tyne to make it possible to facilitate the arrival of ships like the Alam Penting.

As Steven Harrison explains: “There is a close working relationship across all departments from the Harbour Master and his team of pilots and boat crew, to our engineering team who constantly survey the river and of course our team of stevedores, who will be working in shifts around the clock to discharge these large cargo vessels”.

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Source: Port of Tyne, August 4, 2011