Wärtsilä has just completed the acquisition of Deutz’s medium and large marine engine service business. The acquisition price is €115M and the parties aim to close the transaction by April 2005. This deal, which is subject to the usual competition authority approvals, will increase the installed engine base for Wärtsilä Service by 12 500MW, some 9%.

Wärtsilä will retain the Deutz Marine brand name and will be the supplier of original spare parts and services, including worldwide technical support for Deutz medium and large marine engines with outputs ranging up to 7250kW.

Approximately 200 people from Deutz's organization will move to Wärtsilä in different parts of the world. Wärtsilä Nederland in Zwolle will act as the product company for Deutz medium and large marine engines while Deutz workshops in Hamburg, Harlingen, and Montreal will be taken over by Wärtsilä and remain operative. In other locations Deutz marine service will be integrated with Wärtsilä.

Specifically the deal covers the following engine types:

• Medium-speed: 628
• High-speed: 616, 620
• Older medium-speed and high-speed engine types, including: 716, 816, 232, 234, 601, 602, 603, 604, 528, 440, 441, 444, 500, 501, 510, 540, 640 and 645.

The takeover is the latest in a steady stream of acquisitions completed by Wärtsilä in recent years designed to expand the range of services it can offer across the ship power market. It also follows the engine major’s decision to integrates its Spares Online services with Marine Transaction Services AS (MTS).

Through this solution shipowners/operators get access to all details in Spares Online including product numbers and prices. Spares Online gives ship owners/operators full control of their parts ordering and delivery process directly in their existing purchasing system. Spares Online keeps track of all ship owners / operators installations and provides an updated view of the equipment installed in their plant.

STOP PRESS : Wärtsilä is setting up a wholly owned, state-of-theart factory for transverse thrusters in Wuxi, PR China. Wärtsilä Propulsion ( Wuxi) Ltd will produce Lips brand transverse thrusters. The 6.6M factory and will employ up to 120 employees in line with volume development. Production will start in mid 2005.

Wärtsilä will take part in the newly formed Aker Arctic Technology with a 12.5% stake. The company is a subsidiary of Aker Finnyards and commenced operations on 1 January 2005. ABB and Aker Kvaerner Engineering and Technology AS are the other owners. Aker Arctic Technology Inc will continue the activity of the former Masa-Yards' Arctic Technology Center (MARC) and extends its scope by starting to offer its own portfolio of conceptual ship designs for various shipyards, shipowners and offshore operators interested in operations in ice-infested cold waters.

Former Kittiwake Sales Manager for Fuel and Lubricants, Martin Lucas has been appointed as Director, Asia Pacific, and has been tasked with identifying and developing new business opportunities in fuel and lube testing, water testing and ferrous debris monitoring.

To celebrate the opening of its new regional office, Kittiwake has hosted its inaugural Asia Pacific Dealer Conference at the Eastin Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, attended by more than 25 delegates from 13 countries. On the technical front, delegates were introduced to Kittiwake’s Analex range of ferrous wear debris monitors. Following an in-depth review of the Analex pq technology, participants were able to test oil samples on the new Analex pqF Field Ferrous Debris Monitor.

This development comes against the backdrop of Kittiwake’s new Bunker Sample Storage System gaining Germanischer Lloyd (GL) approval for use on all GL class vessels above 400gt.

The unit is fully compliant with MARPOL 73/78 Annex VI, enabling fuel oil samples to be collected, sealed and then stored in a safe, secure location ready for immediate inspection by Port State Control authorities. A detailed Bunker Sample Log Book comes as standard, enabling the Master to maintain a tracking system for fuel oil samples held onboard.

According to Pierre de Livois, Technical Director of the society’s Marine Division, extensive Finite Element Model analysis and attention to fatigue and structural details at the building stage pays off.

‘We have been able to incorporate all our positive experience into different series of containerships built this year in various shipyards. We were able to check the designs against the most recent developments of sophisticated fatigue analysis during the very preliminary design stage, and during the engineering detailed development. Our latest software tools for structural and fatigue analysis allow us to meet all class requirements in terms of scantling and connection details, and also help to achieve the best compromise in term of cost/benefit for both owner and shipyard,’ he stated.

Ludovic Gerard, CMA CGM Newbuilding commented: ‘This early stage approach, working closely with the class society on a new project, is without any doubt a safety and cost benefit scheme. In partnership, we for instance managed to decrease the fatigue restraints of our 5770 TEU containerships built by Samsung in 2004, without any additional structural requirement.’

Fatigue is a complex phenomenon which requires careful feedback experience analysis and continuous development of dedicated calculation methods and tools. BV has done extensive research with actual structures, and computer modelling, validated by examination of and feedback from ships and floating structures in service. That research has led to it capturing a large part of the demanding market for maintenance inspection and checking of floating offshore systems.

The expertise derived in that field is fed back into other ship types, such as container vessels. BV has been trusted by yards and owners to bring significant added value to the classification of container vessels of different size from 1200 TEU up to 8200 TEU, and now the largest container vessel currently building, of 9200 TEU.

Autosub, the Natural Environment Research Council's unmanned,
self-propelled research submarine, is trapped beneath Fimbul Ice Shelf,
Antarctica close to South Africa's SANAE base. The vehicle is some
seventeen kilometres from the edge of the ice shelf beneath ice over two
hundred metres thick.

It is unlikely Autosub can be recovered and the cause of the failure is unknown.

The mission began on Wednesday morning (16 February). Autosub was due to collect more environmental data from beneath the Antarctic ice shelf. This is one of the most inaccessible and most poorly known environments on earth. Knowledge of this region is fundamental to our understanding of issues such as the role of the ocean in climate change, ice melting and the biology beneath the ice shelf.

The earlier mission, on Sunday 13th February, was the first time a vehicle has been sent under the shelf ice in Antarctica and returned. This single mission has provided a great step forward in our understanding of the true nature of the underside of the ice shelf.

Prior to its loss the, seven metre long submarine had completed 382 successful missions over eight years for marine science in UK waters, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Arctic and on two previous expeditions to the Antarctic.

A new Autosub is in the final stages of construction and engineers at the Southampton Oceanography Centre plan for it to be in use by September 2005.

The current expedition is part of the NERC's Autosub Under Ice research programme which aims to explore the marine environment beneath floating ice shelves. Autosub follows a pre-programmed track carrying out scientific observations as it goes. The programme brings together scientists from a number of areas including oceanographers, geologists,
glaciologists, biologists and engineers from all over the United Kingdom and is taking place onboard the British Antarctic Survey's Royal Research Ship the James Clark Ross.

The cruise continues and ship-based oceanography, biology, sea-ice physics and marine geology is still being undertaken as part of this expedition- the diary for this cruise can be found at: http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/aui/