Harbour Round up

Before setting out upon a road trip to Quebec, I did a final look round the harbour today.

At Imperial Oil's number 3 dock the Largo Mariner was at work unloading a cargo of refined product from Antwerp.

This is the second ship recently that was built by the Hyundai Vinashin Shipyard in Ninh Hoa, Vietnam (High Challenge was here on July 14- [qv]). This one dates from 2018 when it was built as Desert Mariner but was renamed on delivery, with a double change of ownership on the same day. This is a reminder (if we needed one) that ships are commodities, much like their cargo, and can be traded or sold for business reasons. Mid Range tankers, such as this one at 20,407 gt, 49,992 dwt are the work horses of the "clean" (i.e. refined) product business and are operating more profitably than other shipping sectors at this time.

Current owners, listed are Meridian 15 Ltd, but interestingly managers are Cargill Ocean Transportation, the shipping arm of the giant grain trading business. With about 570 dry cargo bulk carriers under it control, it also has a small position in tankers. Cargill expects to have some twenty tankers (all chartered) in its fleet by next year.

A familiar ship appeared at National Gypsum today, but in a new guise. Algoma Verity is the new name hastily applied to the former Alice Oldendorff, one of three ships recently acquired by Algoma when Oldendorff Carriers withdrew from the CSL self-unloader pool. Klaveness exited the pool a few years ago, leaving only CSL Americas and Algoma as members.

Algoma Verity alongside National Gypsum with the ship's 65.5 meter long self-unloading boom swung way out over land to give the traveling ship loader room to work.

Algoma does not stand on much ceremony when it takes over a ship, with funnel marks and hull paint to follow - sometimes years later.

The ship was built in 2000 by Shanghai Shipyard as a typical bulk  carrier with four cranes. However when the Asain economic crisis  ment a change of plans and a series of hoppers, and deck mounted conveyors and a long boom were added to permit the ship to unload to a stockpile. The cranes bucket the cargo out of the hold into the hoppers. It then runs along the conveyors to the boom which deposits the material on land.
Self-unloaders with conveyors in the bottom of the hold (gravity fed) are more expensive to build and sacrifice carrying capacity due to the sloping sides to the holds. They make up in speed of unloading to compensate.
This ship at 28,747 gt is able to reach 48,000 dwt, where a similar tunnel type self-unloader might only make 35,000 to 40,000 dwt. It is not a particularly fast unloader. It can only manage about 750 tonnes per hour, whereas the tunnel types can reach 3500 to 5000 tonnes per hour depending on the cargo.

Autocarriers were particularly present in the harbour today with Tombarra at pier 31 unloading Canadian military vehicles and other non-auto RoRo cargo.  At Autoport the first ship in was Olympian Highway in the flashy new K-Line livery.

It was carrying import cargo, and sailed mid-afternoon for Baltimore. Its place was soon taken by Columbian Highway, which I did not see, but suspect was still carrying the old plain gray hull colour. It was not in port long either, and sailed for Emden, Germany, with some export cargo.

There was also activity at pier 42 as the second crib for the pier extension was coseyed into place.

The painfully slow tow from Pier 9C with Sandra Mary pulling full and with its towing line bar taught, and J.F.Whalen pushing took about three hours.

It was then nudged into place with the crane barge Idus Atwell holding it. The crane barge Derrick # 4 was then moved to the outer face to secure it for the night.

Once in final position the crib will be sunk in place, by admitting water through valves in the bottom.

The tender notice for structural fill was advertised in today's paper, with a closing date of August 1. It is the third phase of the project to extend Pier 42 to accommodate two large container ships at the same time.

Extending the pier is only part of the work needed to accommodate 10,000 TEU+ ships. Back-up land to store the boxes will have to double in size also, and that will necessitate filling in the spaces between the current finger piers if the South End Container Terminal is to remain the port's only facility for the large ships.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, traveling during the next month or so will mean sporadic postings here, and some of those will not be from Halifax.

K-Line centenary

On April 5, 2019 the Japanese shipping company K-Line celebrated its one hundredth birthday. Officially named Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd, K-Line is a major player in the world's bulk trades, and a 31% partner in the 240 ship container line Ocean Network Express [ONE], with two of its once bitter rivals, MOL and NYK.

Its early history has some eerie similarities to Canadian ship building history, but K-Line has survived to reach the century milestone. 

Kawasaki Dockyard Co, which traced its roots to 1874, was caught up in Japan's expansionist plans during World War I. A British ally since 1902, Japan joined the war against Germany, with the hope of expanding its influence in China. It seized German territories in the Pacific while Germany was distracted by the hostilities in Europe, and assisted in the war effort by ridding the far east sea lanes of German raiders. Japan saw itself as becoming the dominant economic and political force in the region.

With the the huge loss of ships due to unrestricted naval warfare, Kawasaki took a chance on increasing its shipbuilding business. They began to build ships on spec, to meet the hoped for increase in trade following the war. However they misjudged the timing and when the war ended earlier than they expected, they were stuck with a number of ships.

Canada's government thought it saw a similar opportunity and set up shipbuilding operations all over eastern Canada, including Halifax Shipyards, and built a whole fleet of ships to meet an anticipated post-war need. Most were not ordered until 1918 and when completed, times had changed.

When World War I drew to a close with the armistice of November 11, 1918, recovery was slow and  there was in fact a glut of ships and shipping rates plunged dramatically. Kawasaki decided to form its own shipping company to make use of the ships it had built and thus KKK was founded.

Canada on the other hand formed a government owned shipping line, took delivery of ships that were built at premium prices, but were of obsolete design, and continued to take delivery of ships that were still under construction when war ended. The Canadian Government Merchant Marine lost millions, eventually sold off its ships at below cost and was forced to close down.

Despite the poor market conditions, K-Line found a way to survive and gradually built up and expanded their fleet. In the 1930s it was in the top 15 world shipping lines. Japan was on the wrong side in World War II and K-Line lost 56 ships. With their 12 remaining ships they rebuilt the business, including the merger with Iino Kisen in the 1960s.  They were pioneers in purpose built auto carriers in 1971 and expanded into terminal ownership, logistics and the offshore.

K-Line's Bolivia Maru berthed stern in at pier 23 in 1969. The 8176 gt, 10,618 dwt ship was built in 1960 by Osaka Zosensho, and powered by a 6 cylinder MAN engine, built under license by parent company Kawasaki Dockyard Co. It had refrigerated cargo capacity and was a regular caller in Halifax.  It was a traditional engines amidships, six hold cargo ship with its own cargo handling gear.

Bolivia Maru was sold in 1977, and sailed as Fides Progress under Singapore flag until arriving at Gadani Beach, Pakistan for scrapping in January 1981.

The coaster OK Service XI is berthed across the camber at pier 25. Note the grain galleries extending to the end of the pier. The grain loading capability was later moved to pier 28. 

K-Line made the transition to containers in the 1970s and 1980s, and thrived until the current drive to consolidate shipping companies and build giant ships placed huge demands on capital. In order to maintain a place among the world's giant companies, the three principal Japanese container lines decided in 2017 to merge. It remains to be seen if ONE can turn profitable (they say they will next year) but each of the partners is experiencing huge losses to start.

The bulker Cape Normandy at 92,379 gt, 180,646 dwt is too big for the Suez and Panama canals, and is thus classed as "Capesize". Built in 2012 by Tsuneishi Cebu in the Philippines it is typical of K-Lines bulker fleet, built to carry ore, and in this case coal. 

Its current fleet consists of 93 bulk carriers, 11 tankers, 13 LNG tankers, 6 LPG tankers, 56 auto carriers and 7 OSVs. It also has one small container ship left after ceding its fleet of 60 box boats to the Ocean Network Express.

Asian Highway, built in 1978 was one of the early auto carriers, with a capacity of 4700 cars. It was scrapped in Chittagong, Bangladesh in 2009.


Today's arrival in Halifax, Olympian Highway was built in 2017 by Shin Kurushima, Onishi, and at 75,185 gt, 20,445 dwt has a capacity of 7,539 CEU. The ship is owned by Atlantic Lease Co on charter to K-Line.

K-Lines auto carriers now sport a colour scheme that repeats their funnel mark and replaces the (boring) all gray hull they used in recent years.

Kentucky Highway built in 1987 wore the old colour scheme until broken up in Aliaga, Turkey in April 2016.

Life has not always been rosy for K-Line, and it faces stiff competition in all its business lines. ONE has had a rocky start and that has not helped the company's bottom line.

History unfortunately rarely plays a part in the success of shipping companies. Supply and demand economics and changing trade patterns outweigh past successes. We have seen many famous and long-lived names go down in flames or get swallowed up in mergers in recent years, but K-Line exhibits a certain determination in its management culture that probably bodes well for it.

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