HGK builds for BASF

THROUGH THE SHALLOWS

INLAND WATERWAYS • HGK SHIPPING IS HELPING BASF KEEP ITS PROCESSES RUNNING WITH A NEW GAS BARGE CAPABLE OF OPERATING IN VERY LOW WATER LEVELS ON THE RHINE

HGK SHIPPING HAS put its latest newbuilding into service. The low-water gas tank barge Gas 94 has been specifically designed and built to service the requirements of BASF to supply raw materials to its Ludwigshafen plant from the ARA ports. The Rhine and its delta are crucial to BASF’s supply chain, with most waterway shipments making their way through the critical water levels at Kaub in the central Rhine valley.

Recent low water events on the Rhine have spurred operators to look at innovative designs and Gas 94 has been designed in such a way that it can operate in just 30 cm of water at Kaub while still carrying 200 tonnes of liquefied gases. This has been made possible through optimised uplift properties on the vessel’s hull, achieved by a complex arrangement of cargo areas and the drive system technology. One outcome of this is that the tanker has a width of 12.5 metres, which is larger than other vessels in the HGK fleet.

The tank barge also employs a dieselelectric drive system which, HGK says, will help it and its long-standing customer BASF to achieve their sustainability goals. “The combination of an innovative drive system with a ship design that is optimised for extremely low water levels, provides an impression of how we think that inland waterway shipping will develop in future,” says Steffen Bauer, CEO of HGK Shipping.

“However, HGK’s top priority is to meet the requirements of industry,” adds Anke Bestmann, managing director of HGK Gas Shipping. “It’s our goal to put into service six modern low-water vessels with optimised drive systems during the next few years and therefore construct the Gas 100 by 2026.”

COMBINED SUCCESS The search for new solutions was caused by the effects of the ongoing low water levels on BASF’s logistical processes in 2018 as well as recurring low water levels on the river Rhine since then. It was realised that new ship designs should make a significant contribution to safeguarding the competitiveness of the group’s business site at Ludwigshafen.

“HGK Shipping is a long-standing partner of BASF and was able to convince us with its innovative design for a low-water gas tanker conceived by the company’s own Design Centre,” says Barbara Hoyer, vice-president of domestic deliveries at BASF. “The Gas 94 will be used to transport liquefied gases between the ARA ports and Ludwigshafen in future and will therefore make a major contribution to supplying the business site in Ludwigshafen with critical raw supplies,” adds Derya Kurus-Ebermann, business manager for C4 and heavy cracker products at BASF.

“The Gas 94 is characterised by its unusual aft and foreship designs and the low-water properties that they achieve,” explains Tim Gödde, managing director of HGK Shipping’s ship management business unit. “While the foreship has been designed as a very large unit and therefore ensures increased uplift, the stern part of the vessel is rather like a diffusor. Despite the comparatively small diameter of the propeller, we can guarantee the necessary operational performance, while optimising the fuel consumption behaviour created by the diesel-electric drive system at the same time.”

The concept, the basic idea and the engineering for this forward-looking design were developed by HGK Shipping’s Design Centre in close cooperation with the transport management experts at HGK Gas Shipping in Hamburg. An order was placed with the Partner shipyard in Szczecin to construct the hull. www.hgk.de

HGK SHIPPING AND BASF HAVE BEEN WORKING

TOGETHER TO ENSURE THE CONTINUITY OF SUPPLY