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Displaying items by tag: New Route: DublinBristol

#NewRoute - Seatruck Ferries, the Irish Sea’s dedicated unaccompanied freight operator, has begun a weekend service connecting Dublin and Bristol.

The UK west coast port, Bristol is a major hub for car imports, and the connection allows car manufacturers to enter Ireland directly without the need for a UK trunk. The new service uses a Seatruck ro-ro vessel that would otherwise be idle at the weekend.

The operator which celebrates its 20th year has a network of three routes: Heysham – Warrenpoint (their first route) Dublin-Heysham and Dublin-Liverpool.

With the summer just gone, this is normally a quieter period, however, Seatruck Ferries have reported strong growth and new service offerings on its Irish Sea routes. During August alone, shipment of unaccompanied trailers was 24.9% increase compared with the previous year.

By operating to Heysham and Liverpool, this allows freight operators using unaccompanied trailer shipments to use their drivers and equipment more efficiently.

The English ports providing significant road mileage savings compared with the traditional transit by other operators through ports in Wales and Scotland.

Published in Ferry

Shipyards

Afloat will be focusing on news and developments of shipyards with newbuilds taking shape on either slipways and building halls.

The common practice of shipbuilding using modular construction, requires several yards make specific block sections that are towed to a single designated yard and joined together to complete the ship before been launched or floated out.

In addition, outfitting quays is where internal work on electrical and passenger facilities is installed (or upgraded if the ship is already in service). This work may involve newbuilds towed to another specialist yard, before the newbuild is completed as a new ship or of the same class, designed from the shipyard 'in-house' or from a naval architect consultancy. Shipyards also carry out repair and maintenance, overhaul, refit, survey, and conversion, for example, the addition or removal of cabins within a superstructure. All this requires ships to enter graving /dry-docks or floating drydocks, to enable access to the entire vessel out of the water.

Asides from shipbuilding, marine engineering projects such as offshore installations take place and others have diversified in the construction of offshore renewable projects, from wind-turbines and related tower structures. When ships are decommissioned and need to be disposed of, some yards have recycling facilities to segregate materials, though other vessels are run ashore, i.e. 'beached' and broken up there on site. The scrapped metal can be sold and made into other items.