The Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company will write off nine barges aged between 45 and 54 and have been out of operation for a long time but the company has to spend money to keep them afloat. The decision authorizing the write-off was made by a Ministry of Infrastructure commission, the company’s Board Chairman Dmytro Barinov said.
"They have been out of service for 20 years because of their technical conditions and lack of goods for these types of ships. They are rusted and they have capsized occasionally and we saved them – along with the Danube – from environmental problems. We expended money, effort, and time. The last permission to write off the shipping company’s physically and morally obsolete vessels was granted in October 2014," Barinov stated this on his Facebook page.
The barges will be sold for scrap. The company will use the proceeds to renew its fleet, specifically to finance construction of new barges of the type SLG-021 (the 1635 OMDLK project) at the Kilia shipyard, which is controlled by the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company.
"By the way, bidding for the right to update the 20-year-old project to meet the new requirements of the Ukrainian Register ended on the ProZorro electronic auction platform just last week. The winner is the Grand Engineering private company," Barinov said.
He added that the barges will be sold via the ProZorro electronic auction platform and that all the details will appear on the company's website soon.
As reported earlier, Barinov recently said that the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company planned to invest more than 27 million in repair of its fleet at the Kilia shipyard in 2017.
