Yantai Raffles Shipyard secures US$175 million in multiple newbuilding contracts
Tidewater¹s commitment to build these vessels in Yantai Raffles Shipyard is part of Tidewater¹s new build program announced early last year in January 2000.
Tidewater Marine owns and operates over 570 vessels, the world's largest fleet of vessels serving the international offshore energy industry. With a large fleet of vessels, the company operates, and has a leading market share in most of the world's big and significant oil and gas exploration markets and provides services supporting all phases of exploration, development, and production, including towing of and anchor-handling to sustain drilling, workover, and production activities, and supporting pipelaying and other offshore construction activities.
Yantai Raffles Shipyard is located on Zhifu Island, Yantai, in the Shandong Province of China. Yantai Raffles is part of the Brian Chang Group of Companies and is the only majority privately foreign-owned with 100% management shipyard in China. In the past six months, Yantai Raffles Shipyard has secured orders to build six units of Voith Schneider Azimuth Harbor Tugs for a Middle East client, one unit 67m 16,000 bhp anchor-handling towing supply vessel for Klyne Tugs, UK, and one unit 48m 5,400 bhp maintenance support vessel for SMIT Salvor B.V.
"We look forward to introducing a state-of-the-art Tidewater fleet to the world through this new build program. Yantai Raffles Shipyard has proven to be a premier shipyard with a commitment to building world class quality vessels. Their reliability is evident in the recent delivery of our vessel the M/V Nautical Tide build at Yantai during 1999 and 2000. We have every reason to believe that Yantai will deliver quality vessels on time," said Keith Lousteau, senior vice president, Tidewater Marine L.L.C., USA.