A new 10,000 tonnes heavy lift vessel (HLV) is being added to Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) existing offshore facility-building fleet after being completed by affiliate Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries.
The 182m vessel, which is equipped with eight double truss jib cranes, will increase HHI’s maximum lifting capacity per module more than six-fold from 1,200 tonnes to 8,000 tonnes.
With the new HLV, HHI says it can install bigger modularised blocks built on-ground onto offshore facilities at a time, and therefore minimize the potential risks of working at height.
As the global offshore market has been seeing an increase in the size of facilities, the addition of the mega-sized floating crane can also help HHI reduce construction time of a variety of offshore structures it builds, bringing about 24 billion Korean won (US$21.9m) in cost reduction each year to HHI.
After a series of final tests, the HVL will join HHI’s fleet in Ulsan in March and begin operation from April this year.
It will be used to build 19 offshore projects, including Q204 FPSO for BP at HHI’s offshore yard in Ulsan, South Korea.
