Flowering

It is a little early in the year for flowers, but that seemed to be the theme in Halifax today. The auto carrier  Primrose Ace  arrived at Autoport this morning.

Primrose Ace has just lowered its 100 tonne capacity stern tramp at Autoport. 

 

Despite the ship's calls in Halifax in December 2017 and December 2018, I was not able to get a photo before now. Built in 2007 by Toyohashi Shipbuilding, the 59,952 gt, 17,339 dwt PCTC has a capacity of 6400 cars according to the MOL ACE (Auto Carrier Express) website. Of the 120 ships in the fleet, the largest has a capacity of 6800 cars, so this is one of their larger ships.

Parent company Mitsui OSK Lines is a huge conglomerate of more than 400 subsidiaries. Even after hiving off their container line last year to form Ocean Network Express with K-Line and NYK Line it still has a large interest in bulk  carriers, tankers, passenger ships, terminals on onshore logistics.

The other botanical presence in Halifax today presents an apparent contradiction, at least at first glance, combining Swiss mountains with tropical flowers. Alpine Hibiscus arrived at Imperial Oil dock number 4 late Saturday from Baton Rouge, LA.

Alpine Hibiscus goes with the basic black and white colour scheme, unlike the other tanker in port - see yesterday's post.

The actual owners of ships are often hard to determine. This one is no different, however it is managed by the Singapore-based ST Shipping and Transport Pte, the shipping arm of the controversial multi-national Glencore Inc. Possibly the tenth largest company in the world, Glencore (which merged with Xstrata in 2013) is headquartered in Switzerland. That would explain the "Alpine" prefix.

Of course like most tankers these days, the ship was built in South Korea, and the hibiscus is the national flower of South Korea, which may explain the choice, and the contradiciton.

Hyundai Mipo, Ulsan, delivered the 23,313 gt, 37,857 dwt ship in 2010 as Megacore Hibiscus. The name was changed to a more modest one in 2011 when Glencore needed to spruce up its image somewhat after a number of scandals - "Megacore" was just too close to reality. 

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