Wednesday 30 May 2012

Toanui


Andoas (ex-Lorenza, ex-Toanui, ex-Australian Spirit). IMO 8509442. Tanker. Length 182 m, 9,210 t. Peruvian flag. Classification society Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. Double sided ship built in 1987 in Nagasaki (Japan) by Mitsubishi. Owned by Naviera Transoceanica SA (Peru). Sold as is in Peru for demolition in Bangladesh. US $ 327 per ton.

Toanui departing Dunedin, NZ (Photo: www. helderline.nl)
Robin de Bois' May summary of ships sold for demolition in 2012 contains a short, but significant precis to the Antipodean Mariner. Toanui was the first ship the AM bought.

She was built in MHI Nagasaki by BP for the Australian coastal trade and was a bespoke design. Fitted with a bow thruster and huge accommodation block, she spent her first years trading from BP's Kwinana Refinery across the Australian Bight to Esperance, Adelaide and Melbourne. As demand grew she became too small and was replaced by the ex-'Oluf Maersk', renamed 'Australian Pride'.

As a purpose built coastal tanker, she was perfect for the New Zealand coastal trade. Nice features were a mix of large and small cargo tanks for multiple products, electrically-driven deep-well cargo pumps and pretty much 'two of everything' mechanical and electrical.

The purchase was completed under a structured finance arrangement whereby Citibank bought, and then bare-boat chartered, Toanui to the coastal shipping consortium. AM still has the small model and tombstone marking the deal.

Toanui's Citibank model and deal tombstone
Toanui had a relatively short life (four years) under the New Zealand flag and was replaced by 'Kakariki' in 1999. For more on the NZ coastal tanker fleet, Captain M.H.Pryce's article is linked here.

The Antipodean Mariner




3 comments:

  1. It's always hard to see a ship leave service, but one's first ship...

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  2. As someone who knows nothing about ships I am surprised how soon ships are broken up!Having cost a fortune to build why do they wear out so soon?
    Cheers, I enjoy your blog, Lance.

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  3. Thanks Lance. Commercial ships have a life of about 25 years, after which the costs of replacing worn and corroded ship outweighs the value in scrap. Currently, old ships will fetch about $400 a tonne as scrap, for Toanui a residual value of about $3 million. New price to replace, about $30 million. At 25 years, pipes are leaking, steel plates are corroding in ballast tanks and spares are hard to procure. The 5th Special Survey, at 25 years, is usually the tipping point to despatch for cash.

    AM

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