Besiktas Shipyard branches out

Vessel specification for the steel-made craft is 17 m, with capacity for six pilots, 1,500 hp, and 19 knots maximum speed. Sea Eagles Shipping provides marine and offshore services to the oil and gas sector as well as engineering groups. The vessel's price was not disclosed.

Besiktas Shipyard is active in the workboat sector, but has also made a name for itself building larger craft, such as trawlers and fishing vessels, seismic support vessels and LPG carriers, as well as river-type product tankers. “We recently signed two firm newbuild contracts with a Canadian owner for two 15,000 dwt bitumen carriers of 130 m in length,” said Mesih Behkam, a representative of the workboats division at Besiktas told Seatrade Global.

Besiktas is attending the Dubai show for the first time, after concentrating earlier attention to the European market, in particular Norway and the Faroe Islands.

Besiktas Shipyard is owned by the Besiktas Group, one of Turkey’s oldest family-run concerns, with original interests in ship management. It started newbuildings in 2001 and in 2007, purchased land for a new yard at Yalova in Istanbul, located around 40 minutes from Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, to the east of central Istanbul. The group owns 12 tankers and four cape-size bulk carriers and has interests across shipowning, management, repair, newbuilding and workboats. It built the shipyard in the period 2007-09.

On the workboat side, Besiktas is building six vessels in 2014, three tugs, two mooring boats and one pilot vessel. It expects the workboats tally to rise to 10-15 vessels in 2015. In 2016, it hopes to deliver a 100m multi-purpose supply vessel to deepwater operator Myklebust of Norway.