The Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife announces the administrative concession to the company Tenerife Shipyards to install a floating dock in the Port of Granadillaintended for ship repair, the second in the island port system. It represents “a boost” to the port area granadilla in this market segment of the shipbuilding industry.
The Board of Directors of the Ports of Tenerife, which met in ordinary session last Wednesday, empowered the president of the entity, Carlos González, to sign said concession, a signature that is pending only for the Palumbo floating dock to leave the facilities of the Granadilla port. This is, to date, the only condition that prevents the formal granting of said administrative concession, says the Port Authority in an official statement.
The specifications that governed this contest establish that the winning company, Tenerife Shipyards, will occupy, over the next 50 years, an area of 41,155 square meters of water surface, as well as another 19,895 square meters of land area, included in the port public domain space. All this environment is destined to install a floating dock and is complemented by an investment of 20.5 million euros by the company.
From the moment in which the parties formalize the granting of the administrative concession, Tenerife Shipyards must submit the construction project for the floating dock within a maximum period of six months. Project that also has to have the approval of the Tenerife Port Authority, which will mark the beginning of the six-month period to begin executing the necessary work.
The president of Puertos de Tenerife, Carlos González, maintains that he has always defended the configuration of the Granadilla dock as a large ship repair center. It is an activity that requires specialized professionals and that would serve as support for the assembly and installation of wind turbines on land and at sea, and even for the manufacture of parts for the export market.
No environmental report required
The installation of a floating dock in the Port of Granadilla It already has the approval of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. In the environmental impact report of the project Installation of floating dock in the Port of Granadillaissued on April 30, 2020 by the General Directorate of Quality and Environmental Assessment, reflects that “it does not require to be submitted to the ordinary environmental assessment procedure”.
The floating dock of Tenerife Shipyards reaches 230 meters in length, with a range of vessels to operate with a draft greater than 7.5 meters and a lifting capacity of 20,000 tonsaccording to the data of the proposal presented in 2020.
With this decision of the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a great advance is made in the Port of Granada and contributes to generating competition with the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas in terms of ship repair and maintenance, a sector that moves some 100 million euros a year just at the dock in the capital of Gran Canaria.
It should be remembered that in the Port of Granadilla there is part of the Ercolino IV floating dock, owned by Palumbo Tenerife Shipyards, which survived the hurricanes it encountered in the Caribbean during its transfer from Port of Spain, on the island of Trinidad. On January 6, 2018, an infrastructure 270 meters long and 78 meters wide, built in 1967 and out of use since 2014, due to the cessation of activity of the Avondale shipyard, located on the Mississippi River, arrived at this site. It is very deteriorated.
The first, in Santa Cruz
The same company, Tenerife Shipyards, has the approval of the Port Authority to install the first floating dock on the Island in the Port of Santa Cruz. On December 15, the Board of Directors authorized the extension of the surface of the administrative concession in the chicharrero dock to install a floating dock 230 meters long by 45 meters wide. The company expects it to come into operation in 2023, once the works on the accessory facilities and the transport and assembly of the breakwater itself are completed. To do this, Tenerife Shipyards more than doubled –27,448 square meters– the 12,048-square-meter plot where it operates in the East Dock of the capital port. The company has installed a ship repair center there through an administrative concession granted in May 2015. Santa Cruz had a floating dock in the 70s of the last century, owned by Nuvasa, of smaller dimensions and intended mainly for the Russian fishing trawler fleet. . |
