Navantia UK’s Harland & Wolff, Belfast, shipyard has recently completed the dry-docking of CLdN’s Irish Sea ro-ro freight ferry Performance for its scheduled 15-year survey, writes Jehan Ashmore.
This took place at the facility’s Belfast Dry Dock, where a programme of maintenance and upgrade works was carried out to support the 2,166 freight lane metre ferry's continued operational reliability on its service linking Warrenpoint, Co. Down, and Heysham, England.
The project included the rebranding completion of the former Seatruck Performance, the first of four Heysham-Max freighters custom-built to operate within the confines of the Lancashire port. Notably, the project involved painting over the dark, blue-branded hull livery of former owner Seatruck (acquired by CLdN in 2022), whose fleet also served and continues to run on the Dublin-Heysham and Liverpool routes, where additional tonnage from the current operator has boosted capacity.
Performance now sports a light grey hull, the livery scheme of CLdN, the Benelux-based short-sea freight ro-ro operator, which, aside from its Irish Sea routes, competes with Stena Line's Belfast-Heysham/Dublin-Birkenhead services. In addition, CLdN has an extensive route network linking the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the Iberian Peninsula.
The Belfast shipyard is where the underwater hull preparation of the Performance was completed for the 2012-built vessel that was launched from the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (FSG) shipyard in Flensburg, Germany.
In addition, engineering works of the 19,722-ton freight ferry's bow thruster and propeller blade renewal, a steering gear overhaul, and additional steelwork repairs were completed.
