August 7 - China's Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC) has confirmed that it is taking a 50 percent shareholding in Greenland Heavylift Holdings (Hong Kong).
Greenland Heavylift is a subsidiary of Kenny Cai's GPO Heavylift, which is currently building four 64,000 dwt semi-submersible heavy lift vessels in Taiwan's CSBC Corporation shipyard.
One of the vessels is the recently delivered GPO Grace, which loaded its first cargo last week - a Module Support Frame (MSF) for Statoil's Johan Sverdrup drilling platform, which is being transported from South East Asia to Norway. On arrival, it will be lifted off by Heerema's heavy lift crane vessel Thialf.
All four of the new vessels feature full dynamic positioning two (DP2) capability and their cargo decks have been strengthened to carry loads of 30 tonnes per sq m.