On 26th February the Unithai Shipyard, the largest shipyard in Thailand, launched a 45-metre-long, 75-tonne bollard-pull Marine Support Vessel for SvitzerWijsmuller of Denmark.

The shipyard says that SVITZER BRANI has a unique design to handle the multi-functional tasks required for offshore oil and gas exploration and production. These include support for tanker berthing operations, single-point mooring (SPM) Hose maintenance at the Floating Storage and Offloading facility, moving drilling rigs, fire-fighting, serving as a standby vessel and assisting with environmental protection.

The vessel will serve ConocoPhillips, at their Bayu-Undan field in East Timor and is scheduled for delivery in May this year. 

SvitzerWijsmuller is part of the AP Moller-Maersk Group, the world’s largest shipping company.

Unithai Shipyard and Engineering owns and operates the largest shipyard in Thailand. Its core activities are ship repair, conversion and new building, as well as offshore fabrication. The company carries out repairs on an average of 120 vessels a year, and is capable of building five new ships at a time. It is currently manufacturing three offshore support vessels, a hydrographic survey vessel , and nine jack-up drilling rig structures.

The launch comes a year since the shipbuilders celebrated the completion of their 1000th vessel . That ship was built for Reederei Blue Star (another AP Möller Maersk Group subsidiary)