Zvezda Shipyard Launches the Second Aframax Tanker

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The Zvezda shipyard has been created by a consortium of investors headed by Rosneft. During the construction of the shipyard, fundamentally new technological solutions were used which will allow it to become one of the state-of-the-art shipbuilding industries in the world.

Zvezda shipyard is being constructed in two stages. Facilities of the first extended stage have been commissioned: a hull production workshop, painting booths, an outdoor heavy outfitting slipway with a fleet of unique cranes and an advanced ship-transport system, a transport and transfer dock.

The constructed workshops made it possible, without waiting for the completion of the second construction stage, to start building a number of ships, including the most complex Aframax tankers.

The commissioning of the second stage will expand the capabilities of the shipyard and will allow Zvezda to build ships and marine equipment without any restrictions. The second stage includes a dry dock and additional full-cycle production shops for the construction of large-tonnage vessels and marine equipment.

Full readiness of the shipyard is expected in 2024.

The Zvezda product line includes tankers, gas carriers, drilling platforms, ice-class ships, including the world's most powerful nuclear icebreakers, The Leader. Zvezda will compete with foreign shipyards and provide Russia with a civilian fleet for the development of offshore fields and the uninterrupted operation of the Northern Sea Route, the shortest between Europe and Asia.

The Aframax tanker is built on an outdoor heavy outfitting berth. This is the most complex engineering structure, one of the largest slipways in the world and the largest in Russia. The building berth includes three slipways with a unique self-propelled ship transport system.

There are four gantry cranes with a lifting capacity of 100 tons, two gantry cranes with a lifting capacity of 320 tons and a Goliath crane with a lifting capacity of 1200 tons, which is the first of a kind in Russian shipyards. For comparison, the maximum lifting capacity of cranes operating at other Russian shipyards is only 500 tons.

The Aframax tanker was launched using the Vympel transport and transfer dock. The dock is the most important element of the shipyard. It enables Zvezda to meet orders for the manufacturing of ships that previously could have not been built at Russian shipyards. The floating dock is unsupported and allows longitudinal rolling of vessels from three different slipway lines of the shipyard and cross-rolling of offshore facilities.

The transport and transfer floating dock is designed for launching large-tonnage vessels with a length of 300 meters and a width of more than 50 meters from the slipway into the water, as well as marine equipment, in particular, drilling platforms and their elements, and ensures high quality and safety of launching.