The first electric tugboat built for Latin America will be heading across the Atlantic after completing commissioning and sea trials in Turkey
Sanmar Shipyards completed this battery-electric tugboat at its shipyard and it undertook sea trials in Tuzla Bay, Istanbul where its bollard pull and FiFi1 fire-fighting capabilities were tested.
This 25-m tug was built to Robert Allan Ltd’s ElectRA 2500SX design for Enap and SAAM Towage. It will offer zero-emissions towage and docking in Puerto Chacabuco, in the Aysen region of Chile.
Sea trials involve inspecting the vessel’s compliance with technical specifications and verifying the static behaviour and performance of the different systems installed, thus guaranteeing safe operations.
“We are pleased with the results obtained during the system commissioning and seaworthiness testing of our electric tug,” says SAAM Towage sustainability and development manager, Pablo Cáceres. “So far, everything has been well implemented and performed beyond expectations, such as the bollard pull record, where the tug achieved 72 tonnes of pull.”
This ElectRA tug has a beam of 13 m, a draught of around 6 m, battery capacity of 3,616 kWh and a speed of more than 12 knots. It is similar to two electric tugs, SAAM Volta and Chief Dan George, that SAAM already operates in British Columbia, Canada.
“These vessels enable us to continue advancing on the path of offering increasingly sustainable services, reducing our CO2 emissions and demonstrating our commitment to innovation and sustainability,” says Mr Cáceres.
Once this electric tug leaves Turkey, it is scheduled to arrive in Chile in Q2 2025 where it will support tankers at an import terminal. “We continue to monitor how this project, which is so important for the country’s energy and maritime transport industry, is approaching reality,” says Enap supply-chain corporate manager, Mauricio Naveas.
“At Enap, we seek to be more sustainable, and we challenge ourselves to address the energy transition, since it represents a substantial step for Chile. This first electric tugboat for our territory and all Latin America is one of the leading initiatives in this context.”
This is the eighth fully electric tugboat Sanmar has built, making it a leading builder of battery-powered vessels, with six more tugboats under construction at the shipyard in Tuzla.
