Tianjin Port Adds Two New 'Intelligent' Tugs

China's Tianjin Port last month held a naming ceremony for its two latest "intelligent" tugs, Jingang Lun 36 and Jingang Lun 37.

The new RAmparts 3500 ASD tugs were designed by Robert Allan Ltd. and built by Jiangsu Zhenjiang Shipyard, and their delivery makr sthe culmination of a project initiated between the designer and the port technical department back in 2022.

The 34.6-meter-long (LOA) vessels are the second generation of intelligent tugs for the port as part of the ambitious plan to create an intelligent port. The first generation of four tugs with intelligent-ship notation delivered in 2019 were also designed by Robert Allan Ltd.

During a six-day extensive sea trial, Jingang Lun 36 and Jingang Lun 37 completed comprehensive self-control auto navigation tests which included automatic searching, approaching, and accompanying a target vessel at sea. This was reportedly the very first time a ship-handling tug has been equipped with this kind of system and approved by a classification cociety.

The tugs were designed and constructed to comply with all applicable Rules and Regulations of CCS, with the following notation: ★CSA Tug; Ice Class B; Cyber Security(S); R2(D); i-Ship(M, E, I) ★CSM AUT-0.

Sea trial results showed that both tugs met all of the requirements of the design by achieving a bollard pull ahead of 64 tonnes and a speed of 13 knots.

The fully customized design comes from a decade of cooperation between Robert Allan Ltd. and the Tianjin Port. Each of the eight crew members have their own cabin which is arranged to comply with the requirements of ILO MLC 2006. There were also specially designed pilot landing platforms provided to create a safe working environment for pilots. For the convenience of the crew, layouts of deck machinery, and machinery spaces were also designed in a similar way as the other tugs in the fleet with improvements learned from the previous operations.