OREANDA-NEWS. June 01, 2009. The naming ceremony for a new tug ordered by the Sovcomflot (SCF) Group, took place on 19 May 2009. The vessel forms part of Sovcomflot Group’s strategy to develop its terminals management business. This envisages, in particular, providing port, salvage and environmental protection vessels.

The ceremony was held at the Damen Shipyards Gdynia (Poland). It was attended by the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Gdansk Sergey Tuchkov, the Master of the Ust-Luga port Oleg Glukhov and representatives of SCF Group’s management team.

The new vessel is named after a Russian epical hero – Sadko.

The tug Sadko is the first in the series of ships, designed to facilitate the safe operation of tankers in the port of Ust-Luga. The second, similar tug – Stavr – will be delivered to SCF Group in August 2009. The tugs of the series will be registered in the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, with St. Petersburg as their port of registry. The vessels will all fly the flag of the Russian Federation.

The new tug Sadko meets all the requirements of the relevant international conventions and the leading classification societies. The tug of the “Damen ASD Tug 2810” project is a modern, ice-classed (Arc 4), highly manoeuvrable tug of 3132 kW equipped with Azimuth thrusters and with a bollard pull of 48 tonnes. The vessel has been designed to operate in the climate conditions of the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. The tug is equipped with bow and stern towing winches and an external fire fighting system. It is capable of escorting large ocean-going tankers.

The SCF Group – is one of Russia’s largest infrastructural enterprises. Its fleet comprises 133 vessels of 9.5 million tonnes (dwt) in total, and the shipbuilding portfolio includes 28 ships of an aggregate deadweight of 2.7 million tonnes (dwt). The average age of vessel in the tanker fleet is six years (the world average age is 12 years). SCF Group is a world leader in the product carrier segment; it is the second in the Aframax tanker segment and owns the largest ice fleet. These market segments are the most in demand for Russia’s foreign trade. The Group’s services include not only transporting hydrocarbons for its customers, but also trans-shipping crude oil via FSO facilities and developing effective logistics for transporting energy. As part of its strategy to develop its oil terminal management business in Russia, Sovcomflot concluded a contract with the Leningrad Pella Shipyard (St. Petersburg) for the construction of four modern berthing tugs. The delivery of the first tug in this series is scheduled for November 2009.

Expansion of Russia’s salvage and specialised fleet by new modern vessels capable of enhancing the safety of navigation in sea ports is an important element of the implementation of goals envisaged by the sub-programme “Maritime transport” of the Federal task programme “Development of the transport system of the Russian Federation (in 2010 – 2015)”.