Bunbury Welcomes New Tugs
The Bunbury (WA) community helped officially name two of its port’s newest arrivals on Tuesday 6 December.
The Svitzer Koombana and Svitzer Marlston received a traditional maritime naming ceremony, blessing the tugs into the Svitzer fleet and to their new home, the Port of Bunbury.
Attended by local dignitaries including the Southern Ports Authority, customers, agents, community stakeholders, employees and Svitzer’s local hardworking crew – the new vessels were welcomed with local flair.
Deputy Mayor of Bunbury City Council and member of Bunbury Port Community Consultation Committee, Cr Tresslyn Smith was naming mother for the event.
Cr Smith’s grandfather-in-law also happens to be one of Bunbury’s first Harbour Masters.
The Koombana and Marlston were introduced earlier this year into Bunbury.
The tugs were designed by Dutch shipbuilding company, Damen, and built in Vietnam.
They are named after Koombana – the local bay upon which Bunbury is located, and Marlston – the prominent local hill overlooking the Bunbury and Koombana Bay.
The names were selected from suggestions by Southern Ports Authority and Svitzer Australia employees.
The new tugs are state-of-the-art and small but powerful, reverse stern drive tugs with first class firefighting capability.
The Damen RSD 2513’s are the first of their kind in Australia – demonstrating Svitzer’s ongoing investment into the national harbour towage fleet.
At the event Svitzer’s General Manager Harbour Towage – West, Jodie Ransom, said Svitzer was proud of being a deeply local company in the communities in which we operate.
“Our local crew do an incredible job delivering safe, reliable and efficient towage operations,” Ms Ransom said.
Ms Ransom noted that only last month the Bunbury crew reported the highest emissions savings in its short period of operations, under Svitzer’s carbon reduction program.
Through the month of November alone the Bunbury team saved 3714 tonnes of CO2 through fuel efficient operations. That’s the equivalent of taking 29 cars off the road for the same period.
Exports from the Port of Bunbury include alumina, woodchips, mineral sands, spodumene and silica sand and imports include caustic soda and mineral sands.
Svitzer is Australia’s largest employer of Australian seafarers outside of the Navy, proudly serving local ports around the country.
Learn more about our two newest tugs below.
