Bangladesh’s leading Shipbuilding Company Western Marine Shipyard Ltd on Thursday announced that it had won a contract to build a passenger ferry for a Danish company.
The announcement, which was made during the visit of Royal Danish Embassy to Bangladesh Svend Olling in Shipyard is a big triumph for country’s emerging shipbuilding sector as it is for the first time in 50 years that a Danish company had placed an order outside Denmark to build such a sophisticated vessel that would ply under the Danish Maritime Authority.
Earlier, the Danish Company, Hundested-Rørvig Færgefart signed the contract with the Chittagong-based Western Marine Shipyard to make the double-ended ferry scheduled to deliver in 2011.
Designed by Danish naval architect firm Jorgen Petersen AS, the 50 meter long ferry with a 2.2 meter draft will have the capacity to carry 28 cars and 147 passengers.
Managing Director of Western Marine Sakhawat Hossain said that Western Marine got the contract following the inspection of its shipyard by the top officials of Hundested-Rørvig Færgefart and after being qualified by the Danish Maritime Authority, known for maintaining strictest maritime traffic rules. The new building will be supervised by classification society Bureau Veritas.
The Country Manager of Bureau Veritas Harunor Rashid expressed his deep satisfaction for the quality workmanship of Western Marine as the shipyard has been qualified by the DMA for building passenger ferry for Danish market.
Meanwhile, Western marine also received ISO 9001:2008 standard certificate from classification society Germanischer Lloyd, first of its kind by a Bangladeshi shipyard.
Danish Ambassador was highly impressed by the international standard capabilities of Western Marine shipyard. The ambassador said that his objective is to assist the development of Bangladesh and company like Western Marine can play a big role for the development of the country.
