its shipbuilding yards

Fiji needs more land for its shipbuilding yards

With business thriving and small ships clustering round the repair berth, Millers Ltd wants to reclaim a couple of acres along the harbour front at Walu Bay, just north of Suva’s main docks, for a six-place dry repair yard. Millers and another engineering and ship repair company, Bish Ltd, are in the paradoxical position of losing business because there are far more ships wanting at tention than there is space available.

Millers and Bish Ltd, usually work on several Asian tuna catchers at a time, plus a few island traders.

Although a number of tuna catchers have moved from Levuka to Pago Pago, they are likely to be replaced, and slipping facilities will be required.

In fact, the managing director of Pacific Fishing Co Ltd, Mr Yuichi Yamamoto, on a recent visit to Fiji, asked for slipping facilities at Levuka because, apart from the cost, his company’s ships often had to wait two months to get slipway space at Suva.

Millers Ltd has added an “if” to the proposal to reclaim land for repair space. If soil tests are such that installation of a crane would cost as much as $1 million, then Millers will think again. But should it go

ahead, Suva’s space for slipping ships will be just about doubled.

The Inchcape group of the UK has bought a 50 per cent interest in Bish Ltd from Burns Philp (SS) Ltd, but future plans have not yet been an nounced. Bish has carried out some technically difficult jobs in the past, and large ocean-going freighters, which have unexpectedly had to make emergency use of the company’s facilities, have left captains and owners surprised and pleased at the level of service. Nearly all the marine side of the Bish engineering work has been repairs; Millers undertakes both repair work and ship design.

The Inchcape interest in Bish stems from its growing South Pacific shipping involvement. The company has four petroleum tankers based at Suva and a majority interest in Marine Pacific Ltd, a Fiji-registered company, which is working up a good salvage and cargo-carrying business with three Suva-based tugs and four barges.

Another tug will soon be added to the fleet.

In addition to Millers and Bish, there is also the government ship yard, now being modernised, which is rapidly earning a world-wide reputa tion for shipbuilding and repairs.

With ambitions to build bigger and bigger ships—its largest to date is 125 ft in length— Fiji's Marine Department has installed this 50 ft high gantry crane at the Walu Bay shipyard. The crane is able to carry fabricated ship sections weighing up to 35 tons from the workshops to the waterside and make possible the building of ships up to 275 ft in length with a maximum of 1,500 tons dwt.