Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

#PORTS – The pace of the volume recovery that began in 2010 for the Irish Ports and Shipping sector slowed last year with only one of the five principle cargo segments seeing any growth, according to the latest annual edition…

#PORTS & SHIPPING – After the first three months of 2012 Drogheda Port Company reported figures well above average in the port sector with throughput growth posting an impressive 59% increase on the corresponding period of last year. Over 228,000…

Andrew Sheen has been appointed Operations Director, Irish Ferries. A former engineer on the company's fast ferry Jonathan Swift, Mr. Sheen joined Irish Ferries from the UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency having served as Technical Performance Manager, Engineer and Ship…

#PORTS & SHIPPING NEWS – The Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO) have welcomed a newly founded ship-management company, Barry Shipping, which started operations in Cork at the end of last year. The company headed by Corkonian Owen Barry,  provides ship…

#SHIPPING – The Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO) has announced the 2012 Schools essay competition for the www.followthefleet.ie educational programme. The IMDO reintroduced the Follow the Fleet education programme to Irish schools and classrooms in 2006 as an online teaching…

#PORTS & SHIPPING - The Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO) and Coastlink are to jointly host Shortsea 12, The European Shortsea Convention at the Mansion House, Dublin on 24th May 2012. This year's event sponsored by the Dublin Port Company,…

#NEWBUILDS-Two of the latest newbuilds for Arklow Shipping, one built in Spain and the second ship  comleted from a South Korean shipyard,  both entered service late last year and raises the fleet total to 44 vessels. The northern Spanish built…

#PORTS & SHIPPING – As previously reported on Afloat.ie Maersk Line's newly launched liner service that includes the return of the banana trade to the Port of Cork continues as another shipment is due from Central America /Caribbean ports with…

#SHIPPING – At a hearing yesterday at Southampton Magistrates Court the German owners of the Antigua and Barbuda registered cargo vessel 'Katja' pleaded guilty to the overloading of their vessel which had arrived in Liverpool laden with rock salt from…

#SWANSEA CORK FERRY – The merchant ship MV Julia which operated as the Cork Swansea Ferry for the last two years is up for sale following the closure of The Fastnet Line ferry service and the loss of 78 jobs.…

#PORTS & SHIPPING – Figures released by Belfast Harbour for the year 2011 show that tonnage rose by 7% to a record 17.644m tonnes. The increase for last year was driven by strong performances in break-bulk and ro-ro (freight vehicles)…

#PORTS & SHIPPING – Drogheda Port set a record tonnage cargo with the arrival of Arklow Bridge (2011/4,723grt) last week. The vessel operated by Arklow Shipping N.V. as previously reported on Afloat.ie had carried 7,125 tonnes of maize, the largest…

#PORTS & SHIPPING- Vega Stockholm, a vessel which featured in the BBC The 'Box' that tracked the movements of a single container around the world in 2008, coinciding with the start of the credit crunch crisis and telling the story…

#PORTS & SHIPPING – Harland & Wolff Heavy Industries Ltd (H&W) have secured a contract to dry dock and service the Searose (2004/139,950dwt) a Canadian east coast based floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel later this year. The 272…

#PORTS & SHIPPING - Cork based marine services company, Mainport is investing $36 million (€27.6 million) to build three supply vessels which will support seismic survey ships searching for oil and gas deposits. The bulk of the financing for the…

#NEWBUILD NEWS - The first of two 20m windfarm service vessels (WFSV) is to be launched from Arklow Marine Services tomorrow, writes Jehan Ashmore. The high-speed aluminium newbuild to be named Gardian 8, has been commissioned to service the offshore…