Another week of activity with four vessels making their first visits to the upper harbour. It commenced yesterday with the arrival at Ravensbourne of Duncan Bay. Fanoula and Voge Renate will also be berthing there and the Dutch-owned tanker Iver Excel at Dunedin.
The tanker is a 29,289gt, 45,540dwt, 182.91m-long vessel that entered service in March 1997. It was the first of six identical 14-knot, product/chemical carriers ordered from the Samho yard of Halla Engineering & Heavy Industries Ltd.
It is owned by Motorschip Product Excel BV, a one-ship company that is part of the Vroon BV group of Breskens, which is the tanker's port of registry. The Vroon family name has been linked to ship-owning and Breskens for more than a century.
Today it operates various divisions that include livestock carriers, off-shore vessels, small feeder-type container carriers, dry cargo vessels and tankers like Iver Excel. The tankers are operated by Iver Ships BV and have the prefix "Iver" in their names. Most of the other vessels in the large Vroon fleet carry the suffix "Express".
The company was also active in the reefer trades for 35 years until July 2005, when that division was sold to the Seatrade concern of Groningen. Iver Excel is interesting in being the first Netherlands-owned and registered tanker to call here for 36 years. Of the 27 that berthed here over a period of 27 years, 21 carried the colours of the Shell fleet.
The 14,762gt, Liberian-flag Voge Renate, from the fleet of H. Vogemann Gmbh of Hamburg, has previously loaded logs at Port Chalmers under the name Joint Bright. On its first visit on June 23, 2000, it generated interest by being the first vessel built in the Philippines to call here. It returned on December 21, 2000, for another load of logs.
Delivered in 1997, it was the second vessel to be built at Balamban by Tsuneishi Heavy Industries (Cebu) Inc. The vessel commenced its career as Sea Splendor, owned by the Joscar Shipping Company and registered at Manila.
In 1998, it changed the name to Joint Bright. Sold to Turkish buyers in 2003, it then traded as the Nassau-registered Clipper Breeze until taken over by its present owner in April 2007.
The 16,951gt Duncan Bay, registered at Panama to owners Kowa Shipping S. A. of Osaka, is another of the now familiar Imabari group's bulk/lumber carrier design. Built by its Shimanami shipyard, the vessel has been in service since 2006, and is on charter to Pacific Basin Shipping of Hong Kong.
Fanoula is a 31,532gt, 56,560dwt bulk carrier that sails under the Liberian flag for the North Shore Marine Corporation of Athens. The 15-knot vessel was built at Yokohama by IHI Marine United Inc which launched it in 2008.
