Houston Pearl and Hamburg Pearl upgraded and Denis Didushok on Covid-19

Houston Pearl and Hamburg Pearl Upgrade Cargo Holds

While we specialize in the safe and efficient transport of industrial materials like ferrous metals, clinker, and aggregates. Yet the continuous carriage of these cargos poses challenges to vessel maintenance and particularly to the cleaning of cargo holds.
SMT management recently identified two of our vessels, MV Hamburg Pearl and MV Houston Pearl, as candidates for targeted cleaning and maintenance. A project team involving members of SMT’s Operations, Technical, Commercial, and Purchasing departments worked together to execute the planning and budget for a full upgrading of the vessels’ cargo holds.

This involved very high pressure water blasting of the cargo hold to remove paint and other residues from the surfaces and then painting the holds with a new coat of paint. The operations were performed in the Port of Houston at Woodhouse terminals and contractor Gulf Ship Services, was selected to perform the works with support of the vessels staff.
Workers operated under challenging conditions due to the COVID-19 restrictions. However, both vessels completed with excellent results on time and on budget, and were ready to go back to work. In fact, MV Houston Pearl proceeded to load a full cargo of grains after this operation.

Many thanks to the SMT project team, Johnny Babun, David Karasz, Marc Smeets, Tomasz Sabotowski and Magdalena Wrzaszcz, the vessels staff, Gulf Ship Services, K&C Shipping agencies and Woodhouse Terminals Houston, for making this a successful project.