Salvtug expands tugboat fleet

Marine services provider Malayan Towage and Salvage Corporation, also known as Salvtug, inaugurated on Friday three new tugboats to beef up its capacity to provide critical support services to the shipping industry.

Salvtug president Capt. Edgardo Gualberto said the new tugboats consisted of M/T “Vigilant,” a Japanese-made 4,000-boiler horsepower (BHP) hybrid harbor assist tug, and the 4,400-BHP M/T “Intrepid” and M/T “Defiance,” both ocean-going harbor tugs from Singapore.

All three vessels are specially fitted with external fire-fighting equipment, Gualberto noted. In addition, Intrepid and Defiance have oil spill equipment.

Aside from being outfitted with the latest in technology, the new tugboats are so powerful that they can perform towage without difficulty, Gualberto added.

Salvtug Chairman and CEO Terry Watkins said the new tugboats represent “the beginning of a new era” for Salvtug, which started out in 1974 with just three coastal tugs and four barges.

Watkins said the company now owns 41 multi-tasked tugs, six special project vessels, a crewboat, and 13 container and general cargo barges, which include M/T “Trabajador-1,” said to be one of the more powerful oceangoing salvage tugs in the Western Pacific today.

Salvtug, which maintains vessels in the Subic Bay Freeport and other major ports in the Philippines, engage in the provision of marine services like harbour docking and undocking, ocean and coastal towage, marine salvage and wreck removal, oil spill response and recovery, emergency firefighting and underwater operations, as well as barging.

Officials say Salvtug now provides over 90 percent of the docking and undocking services for all types and sizes of vessels calling at all major Philippine ports.

It also provides tug service for coal power plants in Sual, Pangasinan; Masinloc, Zambales; Calaca, Batangas; and Pagbilao, Quezon, and services very large crude carriers (VLCC) and tankers that call at Petron, Shell and Caltex refineries and depots in Bataan and Batangas.

Salvtug has also refloated more than 145 vessels of various sizes, and maintains oil spill equipment of the Philippine Coast Guard and some oil companies. (HEE/MPD-SBMA)

PHOTO:
Guests board the M/T Defiance, one of the three new tugboats inaugurated by the Malayan Towage and Salvage Corporation at the Bravo Pier in the Subic Bay Freeportlast Friday.