Turkey’s Sanmar Shipyard has successfully completed sea trials of what will be be the third fully-electric tug it has built for South American based towing giant SAAM Towage.
It is based on the exclusive-to-Sanmar ElectRA 2500SX design from Canadian naval architects Robert Allan Ltd.
The largest provider of towage services in the Americas, SAAM Towage already operates two emissions-free ElectRAs – SAAM Volta and Chief Dan George – on the west coast of Canada.
Welcoming those first two ElectRAs to the SAAM Towage fleet, the company’s sustainability and development director, Pablo Cáceres, said: “Electric-powered tugs represent the way to advance towards more sustainable development and move our business into the future.”
This latest tug will become the first fully electric tug to operate in Latin America, and the eighth built by Sanmar.
With an overall length of 25.4 meters, beam of 12.86 meters, draft of 5.6 meters, and maximum battery capacity of 3,616 kWh, it can achieve a bollard pull of at least 70 tonnes, and a speed of 12.5 knots.
“It was extremely important when we were developing the ElectRA Series with our partners Robert Allan Ltd and Corvus Energy, that the move to electricity and other alternative fuels should not come with any loss of power or performance,” said Rüçhan Çıvgın, commercial director of Sanmar Shipyards.
