The final delivery should take place in the second part of the year.
It has been 16 years since the last military ship was built in a Croatian shipyard for the needs of the Croatian Navy. At the time, the King Dmitar Zvonimir vessel was launched in a shipyard in Kraljevica. This Saturday, the Brodosplit shipyard will present the prototype of the coast patrol ship for the Coast Guard. It will be a technical launch because the ship will be worked on in the sea for another two months. It is expected that all the necessary tests will be concluded by the end of the year when the delivery ceremony will be organised, reports Poslovni.hr on June 2, 2017.
The contract between the Ministry of Defence and Brodosplit for the construction of five coastal patrol ships was signed in 2014, and its value is almost 400 million kuna. It includes the drafting of the main project of the ship, the construction of a prototype and four more ships in the series. The new patrol ship will be a Croatian product in its entirety.
After completing the equipment process, extensive navigation tests will follow. Their conclusion is expected by the end of 2017 when the ship will officially be named and handed over to the Croatian Navy. However, since this is a prototype, individual tests will continue even after the handover of the ship to the Navy. They will be carried out in the harshest weather conditions on the Adriatic Sea, with the aim of assessing the durability and optimisation of technical solutions.
The prototype construction lasted a year longer than originally planned. Leonardo Martinović, the project manager at Brodosplit, explains that the first computer tests showed defects in initial plans and a very high risk of not fulfilling the necessary tactical and technical requirements. Also, Brodosplit had to seek the re-approval of the project documentation.
Martinović says that the main modification was a change of the material from which the ship was built. It should have been constructed with ordinary shipbuilding steel, but that was replaced with a special high strength steel, which is harder to use during construction, but which is ultimately lighter and lowers fuel consumption later.
With this project, Brodosplit will acquire important references for new, special purpose shipbuilding projects.
Martinović says that they will construct four more ships within the agreed deadlines. About 80% of the total installed equipment is made by Croatian producers, and the shipbuilding works have been almost entirely performed by Brodosplit.
In the 1960s, Brodosplit started to develop submarine construction projects. For the Yugoslav Navy, it constructed as many as eight submarines, 18 diving vessels, four auxiliary multipurpose ships, and four barges for fuel transportation. Brodosplit’s military program also included the construction of torpedo submarines and construction of large ships Cetina and Krka.
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