Company floats mooring concept

The inventor of a vacuum-clamp mooring system aims to make waves in international shipping circles, says RICHARD BRADDELL.

It's dangerous, takes time and requires numerous workers, yet ship mooring is still done the same way it was 2000 years ago.

Moorings Systems, a new company to be floated on the New Capital Market, aims to change that.

Its automated mooring system is already being used to clamp the inter-island ferry Aratere to the wharf in Wellington.

It takes four seconds - as against several minutes to tie it up the conventional way - and is done at the press of a button when up to four huge vacuum pads, each capable of applying the force of a tug boat, suck the vessel against steel mooring plates on the wharf.

The Mooring Systems company has been created for the float. It has $400,000 in cash and will raise a further $600,000 through the issue of 1.2 million shares at 50c each.

Organising broker Forsyth Barr has classified the investment as speculative since there is no guarantee that the key transaction, the acquisition of Mooring International, which operates the business and holds key patents, will proceed.

The final price for Mooring International is subject to valuation.

In September, two Norwegian companies invested $800,000 in Mooring International, paying $16,000 a share, or eight times the previous sale in May of $2000 a share.

The automated mooring system is the brainchild of former ships officer and major shareholder Peter Montgomery. It has already attracted the interest of the US Navy for its ability to attach ships at sea and because it enables a ship to accommodate all three motions of the sea - up, down and sideways.

Mr Montgomery believes the potential is huge since there is virtually no competition - it would take 12 to 24 months for a competitor to match Mooring International's technology - and Scandinavian ferry operators alone would provide a significant market.

At present, all manufacturing is done by subcontractors in the firm's home town of Christchurch, although it is likely there will be local content in new markets.

Individual mooring set-ups cost between $1 million and $2 million.

The system has performed to expectations in 4000 moorings since the Aratere was brought into service in the middle of last year.

In contrast to the shore-based facility Mr Montgomery originally envisaged, Tranz Rail wanted the vacuum unit shipboard, with the vacuum pads attaching to steel plates on the wharf rather than the hull.

Either way it was a breakthrough for the fledgling company, which needed a test bed for its ideas and seized the opportunity when the Aratere's Spanish builder sought such a mooring system provider.

Mr Montgomery says the system has many advantages. Aside from eliminating the potentially fatal risk of mooring lines snapping and whipping back on watersiders, it is very fast, thus speeding turnarounds, and on a container ship would cut out the most personnel-intensive operation.

It is also energy efficient. Once the mooring is made, no further power input is required. The vacuum seal stays intact even if the power fails.

Mr Montgomery believes the greatest potential is in the wharf-based system's ability to handle ships of all shapes and sizes, while the potential for ship-to-ship moorings has taken the fancy of the US military and other operators who need to transfer cargoes at sea.

The next application is likely to be a wharf-based module for a Sydney-based shipping operator which will be able to attach to ships of any size.

Another potential contract under discussion with a German container-ship operator would involve much larger suction pads and units that would run on tracks attached to the side of the wharf.