Tenerife Shipyards' Floating Dock Receives 14 Objections

Fourteen objections have been submitted to the proposal from Tenerife Shipyards for the installation of a floating dock in the second alignment of the East dock at the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Among them are the Association of Stevedoring Companies and the Provincial Association of Ship Agents, TCTenerife, some shipping agents, and individuals. CEPSA and Terminales Canarios are also included, along with three companies based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The president of the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Pedro Suárez López de Vergara, stated to puentedemando.com that this week they will begin responding to the objections submitted. However, there is no news on whether the environmental impact study has been sent to Madrid, in due time and form, for its final approval. This detail is important for the process to conclude favorably and not suffer further delays.

The floating dock that Tenerife Shipyards wants to bring to the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife represents an investment of 20 million dollars. It is a floating dock with a lifting capacity of 20,000 tons, which will come from South Korea or the USA, as there is a pre-agreement for its acquisition, and it would be positioned in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife within a month and a half. This would significantly expand the industrial capacity of the Tenerife shipyard for naval repairs and increase its workforce by between 700 and a thousand people, according to the company's estimates.

Not only will there be platforms and vessels from the offshore industry, in which Tenerife Shipyards is an international specialist, but also any other type of ship that requires dry docking, so the shipyard will work 24 hours if necessary. This will be supported by the company's commercial management, which has many good contacts abroad, backed by the guarantee of its work, which is widely recognized in the sector.

Tenerife Shipyards has prestigious clients, seeks professionals from the local talent pool, creates opportunities, and puts the name of Tenerife on the international map as a reference point for naval repairs. Every time a platform, drilling ship, or any other type comes to repair in Tenerife, it generates a significant invoice from which other involved sectors also benefit, such as pilots, tugboats, moorers, shipping agents, transporters (taxis, buses, trucks, vans...), provisioning, local commerce, and of course, the Port Authority itself.

As we have already mentioned in this section, the initiative for the floating dock reminds us of the one managed by Pedro Anatael Meneses Roqué, then director of NUVASA, when he brought a floating dock of 6,000 tons of lifting capacity from Germany, which was located in the third alignment of the East dock. The first dry docking was that of the tanker “Nivaria,” from Naviera Petrogás, followed by many others, until the decline of the Tenerife shipyard and its subsequent closure when it came under Korean capital.

Photo: provided