Ship Repair and Fabrication Yard
ConceptThe market for ship repair and maintenance in West Africa is not only large but very under serviced.
APA commissioned a report from Mordor into the West African market in early 2021. They concluded that some 220 service vessels were still operating but with roughly half that number also laid up. It is generally held that such offshore service vessels' and other ship repairs are generally undertaken in Las Palmas or Durban, some 3,000 miles from Nigeria. Arising from this report, APA concluded that there was an opportunity for the CEC to provide the space to create a world class ship repair cum fabrication yard. |
Feasibility StudyIn 2021, APA commissioned the International Contract Engineering, a market leading specialist company involved with naval architecture and shipyards, to undertake a feasibility study of a yard that could be "time-proofed".
The study provided three different scenarios: from a basic ship repair yard, through to actual full scale ship manufacture. Space has been provisioned, for example, for a 400m by 80m dry dock for some time in the coming decades. The ICE Report provides layouts and material flows across the yard, which have been incorporated into the Master Plan. For the initial phase, a ship lift is proposed to provide the initial ship repair facilities. |
ConcessionAPA is actively looking for a suitable concessionaire to build and operate the facility.
The advantage for such a concessionaire would be the availability of space for its suppliers and sub-contractors to set up along side the yard and thus provide a vertically integrated operation. APA is aware that a 300,000 TPA pipe mill is being built beside the existing FTZ, and therefore Calabar as a whole could become an even greater vertically integrated cluster to rival other facilities in West Africa. |