Agulhas scrap could pull in R8.6m

WITH AbOUT two months to go before its contract expires, Dutch company Mammoet Salvage is quietly confident of removing the entire wreck of the Safmarine Agulhas within the given time frame. The ten year old Liberian-registered containership, deployed on Safmarine’s intermediate service between Europe and South Africa, was on her way from East London to Durban with 581 containers when she apparently suffered engine failure and ran aground near the buffalo City’s western breakwater on June 26 last year. The contract allows for Mammoet to complete the job within 225 days which takes one through to late May/early June, but given some rather severe weather in recent weeks – the port of East London shut down on March 20 for the first time in five years – salvors are hoping the weather will be kind to them. And so it has been, on at least one occasion, as Mammoet assistant project manager, Edward Oele, admitted to FTW from the wreck site last week. “On March 18 we had a bit of help from the weather conditions (high swells and springtide) as it helped pull the stern section closer to shore.” As things now stand, the entire fore section has been hauled onto the shore by pulling mechanisms, systematically cut up and removed to an East London scrapyard. It has been estimated that about 8 600 tons is involved in the Agulhas salvage. Last week a well-known Cape Town diving and civil marine contractor estimated the current price of scrap to be around R1 000 a ton which, in the case of Safmarine Agulhas, would equate to R8.6 million. The winning tender quote was never made known, nor the vessel’s insured value, but German market sources have valued her loss at US$31.5 million.