Sorry, but the Fujian Express is listed as a wood-chips carrier....

Sorry, but the Fujian Express is listed as a wood-chips carrier.

For Ore Carriers, (as I understand it as a newbie ship enthusiast), the internal structure of the storage and ballast areas need to be completely different for carrying Iron Ore (to help prevent liquefaction of the dust/heavier grain layers, which has caused too many traditional bulk carriers to sink when the IO load shifts to one side by wave motion, sometimes too fast to get the crew into life rafts).

So specialist ore carriers are now designed to keep the load confined to smaller areas with a lot more ballast:





.
So far, I've found over 67 Ore Carriers which are available for contracts between Australia and Singapore-China, including the 2 below for this month, but none of them have cranes or other tall equipment on deck - and most seem to have their regular routes fully booked already.

(No wonder Rio Tinto has their own fleet of over 230 ore carriers!)

All the ore carriers I've found so far have flat looking decks with sliding cargo doors which look like this:



The more red you see, the emptier she is.

Ore carriers typically head to Tassie empty, because most are not suited to carrying anything else, aside from oil, and even when they are, the timing of back-loads to Tassie seems to be nearly impossible.

Perhaps this is a question that our locals can answer, which is relevant if true:
Does the Burnie Port have the ability to unload oil? & if so, which company is usually the receiver?

In any case, the only Ore Carriers I've been able to find headed to Tassie recently are:

* The MARIANNE STOEGER, (pictured above) which came down empty and then she loaded IO (from Savage River) at Port Latta, 60k NW of Burnie, last week and left just before 1am yesterday (Friday) morning, headed for Port Pohang, Korea with arrival due on the 22nd.

* The AQUAVITA AIM, (below) which left the port of Phu My, Vietnam a week ago, (last Saturday morning just before 7am), due at Port Latta next Saturday (14th August at around 5pm), also coming down empty for IO from Savage River.



Last I heard, Savage River only had a life expectancy/contract to sell to the major steel maker Shagang, in China til 2023.
But they've already doubled the size of their deposit through further exploration back in 2013. Maybe they can do it again...?

Interesting that Riley may run dry of our little spot of IO at roughly the same time they run out of their major deposit (at last known resource estimates of 107million tonnes.)








DYOR & GLTAH