Specialist shipowner Cosco Shipping Co (Coscol) has expanded from the Arctic to the Antarctic as it builds up a purpose-built heavylift and multipurpose (MPP) fleet for polar shipping.
The Guangzhou-based company has won the shipping part of the reinstallation of Brazil’s rebuilt Comandante Ferraz Antarctic Station.
Sources say it is the world’s first-ever commercial offshore installation job in the Antarctic, where a scientific research station job ordinarily would have been done by state-owned tonnage.
The Brazilian station was destroyed in 2012 in a deadly generator explosion and fire.
The installation job supplements Coscol’s work at the other pole, in the world’s first Northeast Passage breakbulk service that it started in 2013 and also its contract to service Russia’s Yamal LNG project with purpose-built semi-submersible heavylift ships.
Fellow state-owned enterprise China National Electronics Import & Export Corp (CEIEC) is the lead contractor on the commercially bid rebuilding and replacement of Brazil’s Antarctic station. Coscol chief executive Captain Han Guomin signed the contract with CEIEC in Shanghai, China, last week.
TradeWinds understands Coscol will use the 48,000-dwt Xiang He Kou (built 2016) as the main vessel on the project, along with support vessels. The ice-class Xiang He Kou, equipped with dynamic-positioning-two capabilities, was purpose-built for project installations in Russia’s Yamal LNG project, where a number of other ships from Coscol’s heavylift and MPP fleet are also used.
Stock-listed Coscol — with a fleet of 88 vessels — is the specialised vessel arm of the much larger and merged China Cosco Shipping group.
Although polar shipping is a relatively small part of the company’s total business based in the tropical south of China, Coscol views the sector as a strategic one — not just for the company’s bid to serve high-end project clients but also to cater for China’s national programme of encouraging its companies to “go global”.
On its website, Coscol describes itself as “the first Chinese enterprise to launch polar shipping and exploration and also the most experienced Chinese shipping line in polar shipping at this point”.