TAROANIARA Shipping Yard in Central province will venture into providing other marine services with the aim of turning the station into Uni standard.
This follows the opening of its additional service, Life Raft service, on Saturday.
Currently the Shipping Yard provides services such as slipway facilities and engineering, fitting, machinist, Shipwriting, welding, electronic maintainence of navigation and Life-Raft.
Owned by the Church of Melanesia, its slipway is capable of taking ships of up to 220 tonnes dead weight on a 30metre cradle with maximum drafts of 4m aft and 2m forward.
With the run down of other Shipping ysard like Aviavi and government own Sasape Marine the Taroaniara Shipyard is hopping to go ahead to provide an average of 20 shipping fleets a year ranging from one day to three months for maintance.
Taroaniara Mission Station was first developed in the 1930s as a Mission base, local school and Theological College for the Anglican Melanesian Mission.
The Mission Station included a small maintenance workshop and Medical Post.
During World War II the American Marines took over Taroaniara as a "SEE BEES" base and developed workshops, jetties, stores and other necessary establishment to use during the war.
After the war, the Anglican Church again took possession and slowly developed the station into a Workshop area for general church needs including the various Missionary ships such as Sothern Cross, Cross, Fauabu Twomey, Baddeley and Selwyn.
It became a Training Institute for Mechanical and Electrical, Engineering, Carpentry and Shipwrighting as well as other related skills.
This development continued over the years until in 1980s the yard started to undertake some commercial work.
Although the work was of good standard, the customers were limited and the charges just enough to cover costs and perhaps little profit.
The Church was still seen as a major charitable funds source, supplied from overseas.
Eventually the Manager who had been here for some 26year retired in 1992, the activity at the Station slowly stalled until 1994 when it was decided to recruit a new expatriate manager.
Along with this, the nearby slipway at Aviavi became unusable through lack of maintenance and this further reduced the ability of the Shipyard to function as it no longer had anywhere to slip the churches or a customer's ship.
Accordingly, in 1995, the new manager arrived as a result of the Trust Board's decision to recapitalise the Station but on a commercial basis so that after upgrading 'work, the yard would be able to contribute to the Church's Funds rather than drawing upon them as was previously the case.
The Church of Melanesia was coming of age.
The upgrading program consists of building the slipway, establishing a reliable electrical power supply, big enough to support both the industrial and domestic loads, set up a reliable water supply for the residents and work place.
Also establish a comprehensive work force covering all the standard facilities of the shipyard and upgrade the workshops, stores and machinery.
The slipway is capable of taking ships of up to 220 tons dead weight on a 30metre cradle with maximum drafts of 4m aft and 2m forward.
The side beams cover some 9m width and vertical support arms.
The designer, Brian Ayers of Auckland who helped design and build the 1500 tonne slip in Auckland chose Reynold Christian of Auckland to design and manufacture the hauling winch using hydraulic motors and simple control.
Further, the Rogers and Lough of Brisbane have been contracted to manufacture and supply the bearing housings for the slipway which utilises ex Railway wheels, and a synthetic elastomer bearing materials for long term maintenance free operation.
Unfortunately, The Railways removed the axels before selling the second hand' wheels so stub shafts of some 170mm diameter had to be made.
Again, as a matter of convenience, Rogers and Lough have been contracted to machine up some 40% of the requirement, while the balances are being made in the workshop at Taroaniara.
They are also manufacturing the main haul pulley sheaves and pins and incidentally a propeller for the church's 15 ton inner island work boat which has then been re-engined.
The Principal Contractor for the Slipway concrete work, foundations and laying of the rails is a local Contractor, Semiti Vavtaga who has had ample experience in Tuvalu, Fiji and now Solomon Islands.
He has previously worked for such Civil Engineering Companies as Fletchers and Homibrooks.
The slipway has been designed to meet the local market consisting of both wooden and steel hulled interisland trade and passenger vessels, pole and line fishing boats, tourist craft and general small ship operations.
There is a modest Workshop with machining facilities, Welding shop, some of the best Shipwrights in the country, airless spray, painting and water blasting and Electrical Division.
The Yard can also carry out refrigeration and air conditioning repairs.
The development has certainly changed the old station to be one of the best to offer engineering trade in the country.
By CHARLES KADAMANA
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
