From Begej to Holland – “Begej” shipyard finished construction and complete equipping of “Transferium” freight ship

(Begej shipyard)

“Begej” shipyard from Zrenjanin, has finished construction works and complete equipping of “Transferium” freight ship, which will sale away at the end of this week, from Sremski Karlovci towards Holland. The reason for not sailing from Zrenjanin is that the Begej river level is too low, and the Danube river is opened for all necessary try outs before the buyer takes over the ship.

This ship was order by a Dutch company, “Mercurius”, owner of the shipyard from Serbia. The ship is 97 meters long and 11,5 meters wide, with 2.200 tones in weight. The value of the ship is around 7 mil EUR.

The ship was build for sailings along the coastline and it has many specific characteristics. It can enter canals and its great advantage is that it has its own crane, which means it doesn’t need to go to the port to load and unload the goods. Even tough the average amount of time for building this kind of ships is about eight months, our workers needed more than a year, considering its specific needs, said Dragomir Subic, “Begej” General Manager.

The similar ship was built in 2005 by the same Zrenjanin workers, but it was much smaller than “Transferium”. “Transferium” was done with the new, exquisite technology. The construction of the ship’s body was started in the March of the last year, and the work demanded more time as “Begej” experts were also doing complete design by the buyer’s request. All equipment was imported as it is not manufactured in Serbia. This also influenced on the dynamic of works, as some parts needed more time to arrive from abroad. “Begej” is among domestic shipyards in the highest production class.

At this moment, there are three more sailing objects build in “Begej”. One is planned to be finished by the end of October, the next one in February and the third one in May of the next year. The value of all ships is more than 10 mil EUR.

- For the future projects, we have only completed ships agreed. But we are planning to start doing the ships by ourselves, maybe with some co-operatives, as we still don’t know all technology. Nevertheless, we need more time as until now we’ve never had such equipping technologies. “Tranfserium” will be a good experience for us and we hope to build that kind of ships in less amount of time in the future, said Dragomir Subic, “Begej” General Manager.