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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Black Sea Shipyard Builds Tugboat

16 November, 1999 - 00:00

The Mykolayiv-based Black Sea Shipyard has begun to build a tugboat for Estonia’s PKL Company. The future vessel’s first section was solemnly laid here at the end of October.

The tugboat, christened Mars, has became the shipyard’s first real foreign order in the past six years. The previous contract, dated 1993, was for construction of a series of tankers for the Greek Avin Company, but it brought only losses. The enterprise’s chief engineer Oleh Firsov told The Day that the contract value of this tugboat is $4 million. The vessel was designed by shipyard specialists: it is cheaper than to buy a project at a design office. The tugboat is 33 meters long, 11 meters wide, and can carry 45 tons of cargo. It became possible to conclude the contract because PKL representatives, unlike most other potential customers, did not demand government guarantees, for this is not a common practice in Ukraine. The shipyard itself, whom the customer trusted “on its word,” is acting as the guarantor of the target-oriented utilization of payments (advance payment plus in-process installments).

Shipyard workers believe that this tugboat will draw their enterprise out of its crisis, now that it has been left almost without orders and lost at least $90 million on the Greek fiasco according to the parliamentary Committee to Combat Organized Crime and Corruption. It is scheduled to hand the boat over to the customer on May 22, 2000. In addition, an option (letter of intent) has been signed for construction of another vessel of the same type.

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