Each year the International Association of Dredging Companies (IADC) organises its International Seminar on Dredging and Reclamation in various parts of the world. This intensive week-long course has been successfully presented in Delft, Singapore, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Mexico. Now at the request of interested parties, it will be coming to Recife, Brazil from Monday 19 through Friday 23 March 2012. The Seminar is aimed at (future) decision makers and their advisors in governments, port and harbour authorities, off-shore companies and other organisations confronted with the execution of dredging projects.

Conductix-Wampfler’s UK managing director Alan Jones, said the first order with DP World Southampton will see the firm replacing cable carrier systems on three ship-to-shore cranes. Work will include pre-building festoons at the Salford site before shipping them to the south coast terminal for installation, which will also be undertaken by Conductix-Wampfler.

A further deal on the east coast will deliver a replacement heavy duty festoon system, one of the largest handled in the UK, for one of two coking grab cranes at the Humber Refinery. Repairs will also be carried out to the festoon system on a grab crane at the North East location. 

Mr Jones said: “These latest contracts reinforce the firm’s ambition to secure more work in the port, marine and offshore renewable sectors. Firms use us for our product and engineering expertise.

He added: “The work we are carrying out at DP World Southampton and the Humber Refinery will help to showcase the quality of our products. Our aim is to now forge greater links with other ports around the UK and build a reputation as a leading mobile energy specialist in this sector.

“In the future we expect to see great demand for work on RTG (Rubber Tyred Gantry) cranes. Many of these cranes still rely on dirty diesel powered systems which are costly and not environmentally friendly. Conversion to our electric powered systems will dramatically reduce any port’s carbon emissions.

“We believe Conductix-Wampfler is ideally placed to help firms tackle the challenge of becoming more environmentally sustainable while remaining energy efficient and cutting costs.”

Conductix-Wampfler recently announced a 20 per cent turnover surge, in the last 12 months, rising to £4.3m. It manufactures a range of products in Salford including conductor bars, festoon systems and trench covers.

Mr Jones said strong global export sales had driven growth with major deals signed in the rail, automation and utility sectors.

“Conductix-Wampfler continues to go from strength to strength,” he said. Recent contracts have seen our products used in China, India, Africa and Europe. We have a solid core of business which keeps the firm very stable. There are also a number of very exciting deals in the pipeline which could lead to decade long contracts.”

He added: “We benefit from having such a committed team of more than 30 people at our Salford base who are dedicated to delivering mobile energy solutions to businesses across the globe.”

Chris Welsh, FTA’s General Manager of Global and European Policy, said:

 “We support in principle the inclusion of shipping emissions into the Climate Change Act. But shipping is a global industry and we must avoid taking on the burden of reducing emissions alone or else we will be put on an uneven footing with the rest of the world. This would be bad news for the UK economy and could ultimately mean that less environmentally efficient countries take business away from the UK, thereby making emission levels worse.

 “Clearly, the UK government should play a larger role in encouraging other governments around the world to support an international agreement to cut emissions through the IMO.”

 While there is a need to reduce or at least stabilise CO2 and greenhouse gas levels to ensure temperatures don’t rise further and cause dangerous climate change, it should be remembered that shipping is a comparatively energy efficient way of moving lots of goods very long distances – carrying around 80 per cent of all world trade in volume, it makes up just 2.7 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Welsh concluded:

 “Paradoxically, it is precisely shipping’s green credentials that will attract more companies to move goods by sea and increase its contribution to reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.  We need to ensure that the approach taken to reduce shipping emissions is done at a global level rather than simply trying to solve the problem by introducing emission reductions piecemeal and region-by-region. Additionally, we must have a rigorous and robust method of calculating and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from freight, so that we can track the progress the industry is making.”

RDSC is a passive radiation detection system that integrates with a standard straddle carrier and uses secondary scans to resolve alarms without the need to open cargo containers.

DNI has close working relationships with a number of national laboratories and currently has a significant contract with a United States government agency.

“We are pleased to announce the purchase of the Albuquerque, N.M.-based DNI,” said Thomas M. Ripp, president of L-3 Security & Detection Systems. “With the DNI acquisition L-3 now offers highly advanced radiation detection in a standalone application or as an integrated part of our cargo solutions.”

L-3 SDS is an experienced full-service system integrator with more than a decade of in-depth cargo experience. The addition of DNI’s innovative technology for detecting special nuclear materials (SNM) complements its existing portfolio of cargo inspection platforms which includes the CX-Mobile™ G3, CX-Pallet™, CX-Portal™ and CX-Gantry™. L-3 SDS’ ClearView™ Workstation seamlessly integrates radiation data with inputs from multiple X-ray systems of any type with other sensors such as license plate readers, container number readers and manifest data. Operators are presented with a single interface that increases the probability of detecting a wide range of threats.