Russia needs at least 110 tugs by 2035. The cost of producing domestic ships is high, and sometimes it is more profitable to buy them abroad. This was announced by Nikolay Shablikov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nordic Engineering JSC.
Currently, 37 tugs of various classes are being built in Russia for government agencies. It is more profitable for a commercial customer to buy ships on the foreign secondary market due to the high cost of domestic counterparts.
Currently, another 28 tugs are being built for the sea register class and about nine tugs for the RCO class. If we extrapolate this situation to the next ten years, we must admit that the main part of the fleet that will be purchased will be represented by used vessels with a serious degree of wear and tear.
According to the expert, most of the problems were identified in the construction of Arctic tugboats. Arc6 class tugs make up 2%, Arc5 - 4%, Arc4 - 34%, without ice class – 33%. They are mainly created by order of the state due to the high cost of production.
The price of a tug with a capacity of up to 2 MW is about 600 million rubles, and if it is 2 MW and above, it is 2.5 billion rubles or more. For example, the price of an Arc6 class tug is 5 billion rubles. Such amounts cannot be handled by the commercial segment with our refinancing rate.
According to Nikolay Shablikov, it is necessary to start building tugs for the Arctic on alternative fuels, the best option for which is liquefied natural gas (LNG). However, he noted that it would be difficult to implement this without government support.
Shablikov also stressed that the construction of a similar vessel in China, subject to all technical requirements, will cost the same amount as in Russia. At the same time, cheap and fast construction options do not guarantee the required quality.
The expert also proposed changing the current contracting system, which often leads to the conclusion of contracts without the necessary technical requirements and delays the design process by a year or more.
Earlier www1.ru reported that the tugs "Timan" and "Tepsey" were built at the Oka Shipyard.
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