OREANDA-NEWS. With a loan of EUR 74 million a consortium of banks led by KfW IPEX-Bank is supporting the construction of two ultra-modern special transporters to be built at the Flensburg-based FSG shipyard for the Dutch heavy lift shipping company RollDock. KfW IPEX-Bank contributes EUR 37 million to the financing. The Dutch banks ABN AMRO and Rabobank provide EUR 18.5 million each. The total financing has been arranged by KfW IPEX-Bank and is covered by an export credit guarantee of the Federal Republic of Germany. Tenor of the loan is 12 years beginning with delivery of the ships.

"As far as building technologically sophisticated and high-quality special vessels goes, German shipyards still have some good opportunities," said Christian K. Murach, member of the Management Board of KfW IPEX-Bank on the occasion of the signing of the loan agreement. "We are very pleased that the young and technically innovative ship owner RollDock gave this complex order to FSG, a shipyard that is highly renowned in the sector. We are proud to contribute to the financing of the innovative high-tech ships and in this way also to utilising capacity and ensuring jobs in Flensburg."

In recent years the FSG shipyard has become more specialised in the construction of technically advanced and complex ro-ro ships. The Dutch shipping company RollDock ordered the vessels with a revolutionary design that it developed and IP protected itself. The vessels, which will be identical, are designed to transport particularly large or heavy cargo as is the case in the offshore industry. They can load up to 7,000 tonnes in three different modes:

by crane (lift-on/lift-off, or 'lo-lo') with two installed Liebherr cranes

via ramps (roll-on/roll-off, or 'ro-ro') using adjustable ramps and

by sea (float-in/float-out, or 'flo-flo').

For the flo-flo mode the ships can be submerged by more than twelve and a half metres, enabling cargo to be floated into the hold. This loading mode is suitable for the transport of small to mid-sized ships as well as floating dredgers.

Delivery is scheduled for the end of 2013 for the first ship and mid-2014 for the second vessel.