Genmar George T. for bunkers - and a digression into Japanese shipbuilding

En route to Whiffen Head, NL for a cargo of crude oil, the tanker Genmar George T. put in to Halifax this afternoon for bunkers. The last port given for the ship was Dalian, China in February, - which would be a long and slow ballast voyage. It is likely that it loaded crude in the mid-east or Africa for delivery somewhere en route before arriving here. Since the ship was in the far east so recently it is also likely that it was inspected for asain gypsy moth before it sailed this evening.

The ship's truncated bow indicates that it can load or unload via offshore floating mono-buoy.

The ship was built by Universal Shipbuilding Corp* (former Nippon Kokan KK, shipyard), Tsu, Japan in 2007 and is operated by General Maritime of New York under the Marshall Islands flag. It s tonnages are listed as 79,236 gross, 149,847 deadweight.

* Universal Shipbuilding Corp may not sound familiar, nor sound like the name of a Japanese shipyard. In the face of intense competition with South Korea, then China, there have been a series of mergers in the Japanese shipbuilding industry, and many old names have disappeared and new ones have emerged. Therefore ships built in Japan between about 1995 and  2013 may be attributed in certain sources, to shipyards that, at least in name, did not exist when the ships were built. This a bit of a pet peave of mine, where these sources (and some should know better) use the current name of the yard when they should use the name of the yard at the time of construction.

Universal Shipbuilding Corp was in existence as a name only from 2002 to 2013. It was the result of a the consolidation (read merger) of Hitachi Zosen's shipbuilding interests with those of NKK (Nippon Kokan).

In 2013 Universal and IHI Marine United (the merger of Ishikawa Harima and Sumitomo)  merged to form Japan Marine United (JMU).  An excellent graphic shows this detailed history back to the founding companies in the history section of JMU'S website. http://www.jmuc.co.jp/en/ 

Further interesting (and perhaps surprising reading) reading is the history of Hitachi Zosen Shipbuilding, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Zosen_Corporation 

And more on Nippon-Kokan Kabushiki Kaisha.http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/japan/nkk.htm and: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/nkk-corporation-history/

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