Nelson bids to service Soviet fleet

Press, 9 November 1988, Page 4

Nelson bids to service Soviet fleet

By

WILLIAM HOBBS

Several New Zealand ports are likely to benefit if moves to make New Zealand the main servicing base for the Soviet Union’s Pacific fishing fleet are successful.

Regional or port authorities and firms in Lyttelton, Dunedin and Taranaki have already indicated that they will be lobbying for some, if not all, of the fleet servicing business and yesterday the Nelson Bays United Council resolved to see that Nelson also gets a share of the business. The United Council voted to prepare appropriate submissions to support Nelson’s case after a briefing from a director of the Nelson-based Marine and General Engineering, Mr John Rowling. Mr Rowling, whose firm services Soviet joint-ven-ture trawlers working in New Zealand waters, said he had been discussing the servicing of the Pacific fleet with contacts in the Soviet embassy for several years. If New Zealand replaced Singapore as the main servicing base the benefits both in direct engineering business and

spin-offs would be enormous and could involve serveral ports, he said. At present there was no port in New Zealand with adequate dry-dock or slip facilities to meet the Soviet requirements and it could make sense for one port to cater for the docking needs of the fleet while others accommodated other servicing needs. At present the jointventure fleet serviced in New Zealand numbered about 25 ships, most of them trawlers of about 2000 tons. If the whole Pacific fishing fleet came to New Zealand it would mean 230 ships between 2000 and 6000 tons with a few up to 10,000 tons. With crew changes every six, months when the fishing vessels would probably be in port for two weeks, at any one time there were likely to be 16 ships of the Soviet fleet in port. Mr Rowling said Nelson had some obvious advan-

tages as a servicing base. The most significant was suitable weather which meant the largely outdoor work involved in ship servicing was not often interrupted and that there were very few weatherassociated delays in bringing ships into port. Nelson marine engineeering firms could count on having eight, if not nine, out of every ten working days available for outside work, which was significantly better than other competing ports. He said this was well known to the Taranaki firm bidding for the servicing contract and could see them putting work Nelson’s way. To make sure Nelson received a share of the business, local authorities should make it clear to the Soviet authorities they were willing to co-operate and would welcome large numbers of Russian seamen.