SFT Cone Fenders protect cruise vessels at extended berth in Portsmouth

Portsmouth International Port, the UK’s best-connected port, is ideally located at the Southern Coast of England. The port with its maritime history is an ideal location for cruise passengers, for both turnaround and port of call. Passengers can easily explore the city or use the proximity to London which is just 100km away. With 48 calls in 2018, Portsmouth was looking to further establishing its position as a major player in the cruise industry. In 2019, the city council therefore took the strategic step to extend the cruise berth at the port, aiming to welcome ships up to 255m length and 150,000 cruise passengers per year.

ShibataFenderTeam has been awarded to deliver the new fender systems for the new cruise berth: 6 Cone Fender Systems with steel panels of 2.3m x 6m, 1 Double Cone Fender System with a panel length of 9m and 10 V Fenders (Arch Fenders) of 500mm x 5,000mm.

Our SFT Office in the Netherlands faced a challenging fender design phase considering berthing line and installation as the Dolphin structure was going to be removed and incorporated into the new berth arrangement. The SFT experts worked closely with both the contractor Knights Brown and their consultant Marbas to develop an alternative value engineered design for the fender system. Knights Brown Design Manager - Nick Gibb: “The fender design was a fundamental detail of the project dictating the design for many other aspects and required a truly collaborative approach between SFT, Marbas, Portsmouth International Port and Knights Brown to successfully deliver the project.”

ShibataFenderTeam took into account a wide variety of vessels with all kind of different load cases, and additionally had to consider a chance of top impact on panels at high levels. The fender design and manufacturing now assures a long lasting and high durable fender system.

SFT Regional Director Niels van Houtum reports: “It was a typical UK project:  large tidal difference, combined with some recent winter storms made it pretty exciting. The fender design was challenging but allowed us to once again prove our experience and expertise.”

Anisa Koci, Port Project Manager at Portsmouth International Port, witnessed the recent installation of the Double Cone Fender, being impressed of the challenging, heavyweight operation by Knights Brown.

It was our pleasure to contribute with our experience to this exciting project and wish the port a successful operation of the new berth. #0006

More pictures about the Cone Fender Systems in Portsmouth International Port can be found in our reference section