Shipyard Famagusta Plans to Increase New Builds Next Year
New projects are awaiting Shipyard Famagusta Ltd. as the North Turkish Cypriot company is planning to finish up its brand new workshop which will be capable of machining big capacity shaft, rudder, propeller equipment, used in future newbuildings.
Engineer Çada Yakan at Famagusta Shipyard said that another project plan for the year ahead is increasing the company's new build work, in its continuous efforts to assist its clients at all times.
Yakan spoke to Robban Asselina magazine of the company's activities during the hard times of addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, with the main current focus being the health and safety of its employees and clients while meeting their requirements and constantly being in contact with port authorities.
"As part of our plans to address this pandemic, we continue to work with a reduced number of workers, with a controlled number per area. We have also embraced other measures such as monitoring the temperature of each employee twice a day (in the morning and at the end of the day), including more fruits and vegetables to the menu at the shipyard kitchen, introducing sanitizing stations and being mindful about our employees' mental health.
As we do with all challenges we face, we will continue to improvise, adapt and overcome."
Yakan also pointed out the Shipyard's efforts to adopt some measures to facilitate the ships' activities after the pandemic's high effect to the shipping industry:
"Due to our efforts, port authorities have accepted to charge a fee and give same day permits to vessels to enter the yard after all crew gets tested by port health department and all results come back negative. We are constantly in contact with port authorities and are assisting our customers."
Speaking of coping with industry changes such as new class legislations of sulphur cap and ballast water systems, Yakan said,
"Our first step towards these kind of changes are education. We always try to employ people keen to improve themselves hence when faced with a new rules, they are interested to learn more about it either through articles, seminars or courses. We always have people following up on the sector and regulatory bodies, trying our best to stay up to date with regulations. For instance, we have recently manufactured and installed the first ballast water management system. It was a new system for our entire team but we have researched, asked questions to suppliers, spoke to designers and eventually delivered the project successfully to our client."
Shipyard Famagusta Cyprus is perfectly positioned to provide services for vessels operating in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as being very close to the major east-west trade routes. They aim to provide ship owners, operators and managers with a high-quality service experience, through offering short lead times, with a dedicated technical team working hard to ensure vessels suffer minimal downtime, but also meet the required standards needed to help keep ships seaworthy and have still 100 professional workers within the shipyard.
This article was originally published on Marine & Industrial Report newspaper Vol 42 No.4 Issue last August 31, 2020.
