Russia: UCL Begins Construction of 15 New River-Sea Tankers Under RST27 Project

The construction of 15 new river-sea tankers under RST27 project (capacity – up to 6.9 thousand of tons) was launched at the Krasnoe Sormovo plant (Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia). The customer of new vessels is Volgo-Balt-Tanker, LLC, the subsidiary of holding’s company B.F. Tanker. Five new tankers are being constructed at the Krasnoe Sormovo plant, construction of the other ten vessels is now started at the Okskaya shipyard, which is also a part of UCL Holding. Technical project have been developed by Marine Engineering Bureau (Odessa, Ukraine), detail project have been prepared by Volgo-Caspian Design Bureau (Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia). The investments for the construction of 15 new vessels will amount to 8.6 billions RUR.

The construction of new river-sea vessels is being carried out within the implementation of the program of the shipping assets development of VBTH holding. International Transport Group UCL Holding is the majority stakeholder of this holding. According to this program, the Group will build 23 tankers for B.F. Tanker. The construction of the previous series of 8 river-sea tankers (capacity – 5.5 thousand of tons) is being completed at the Krasnoe Sormovo plant. The first 6 vessels have been handed over to the customer.

B.F. Tanker (Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia) performs domestic river-sea transportation of oil products. The company owns more than 40 vessels with aggregate tonnage of 170 thousands tons . This company mainly transports oil from the plants in the areas of the rivers Belaya and Kama, to St Petersburg, Vysotsk and then to the final destination ports. Scheduled fleet modernization is carried out within the implementation of the B.F. Tanker renovation and development strategy.

River-sea tankers under RST27 project are the vessels with six freight tanks and two slop tanks and suitable for carrying of crude oil and oil products, including petroleum, without restrictions for flash-point, ensuring temperature of carrying cargo up to 60°C. Simultaneous carriage of 2 sorts of cargo is provided. Vessel speed is 10 knots.

(8,6 billion Russian rubles = 296,6312 million U.S. dollars)