Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB) has begun work on the first of two steel landing craft being built for the Royal Bahrain Naval Forces. The contract for the 42m vessels was won against stiff competition from international shipyards, further confirming ADSB's position as the region's leading provider of support services to GCC navies. It is ADSB's first new building contract for Bahrain and also includes two 16m Sea keeper landing craft constructed in composite materials. A traditional keel laying ceremony was held at ADSB's shipyard at Mussafah, Abu Dhabi, to mark the start of work, attended by Staff Colonel Hasan Ahmed Mohammed, head of the Planning Department, Royal Bahrain Naval Force. ADSB CEO Bill Saltzer said: “This is a highly significant export contract for us. We look forward to performing the work on time, on budget and with the excellent quality that ADSB as a company demands and that our customer, the Bahrain Navy, deserves. The 42m vessels, based on vessels in service with the UAE Navy, are designed for troops and vehicle or cargo transportation and for beach landing in Gulf waters. The Bahrain vessels will be the first built using new Aveva Marine 12 software which enhances ADSB's capability in production engineering and brings greater efficiency to the shipbuilding process. The hardware, software and training of the system represents a AED2 million investment that provides ADSB with a state of the art capability to develop designs from scratch using the very latest computer aided design (CAD) tools.
