Since acquiring Sobrena, Damen Shiprepair Brest has serviced 50 vessels from leading shipowners and managers. The yard’s work portfolio includes a large number of Afra/Suezmax tankers and LNG carriers. The latest project concerns the Höegh LNG owned and MOL LNG Transport managed 123,800M3 LNG LIBRA, which is presently at the yard.
Jos Goris, Managing Director of Damen Shiprepair Brest , says: “We are proud of this achievement and would like to thank all our clients who have demonstrated confidence in our ability to perform by bringing their vessels to our yard. Overall we have received very positive feedback from our client surveys but we endeavour to take swift corrective action where necessary on the less positive observations. In this way we increase our service levels after each vessel and we see it pay-off immediately.”
Damen’s French yard has made several improvements to its facilities including implementing more efficient working hours under a new collective labour agreement, investing in a state-of-the-art plasma cutting machine and opening a canteen for more than 300 staff and subcontractors. “Building a canteen in the yard was necessary to facilitate the agreement on new working hours where the previous two-hour lunch break has been reduced to 45 minutes,” adds Mr Goris.
For the larger projects the yard has built dedicated and modern facilities to accommodate over 200 subcontractors, as well as a separate office for specialist or service engineers, complete with 20 plug-and-play workstations.
“We aim to become a modern, clean and efficient ship repair facility with a high level of process transparency and quality of service where each client feels safe and supported. This is not an easy task but we are well underway.”
[mappress] LNG World News Staff, May 15, 2013; Image: Damen