Thickness Measurement for Ice-Going Ships at the Port of Kemi

Inspection services for ships at Kemi

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Where gauging happens at Kemi

Ajos is where nearly all our Kemi work takes place. Forest-product carriers and general cargo ships load over a day or more, and their holds can be measured before loading starts, with ballast tanks and the ice belt from inside done during the loading itself. Container feeders work faster, so their scope is split across calls: ice-belt framing and plating from inside the forward tanks on one visit, decks and the remaining tanks on the next. In winter the outer shell at the berth is often surrounded by broken ice, so external readings wait for the open season.

Kemi is not a docking port for merchant ships in our planning, and owners dock the ships that trade here at repair yards elsewhere in Finland, in Sweden or in the southern Baltic. What Kemi provides is the first look at the winter damage. A spring call, after the ice has gone, lets the team measure the ice belt, bow and shoulder plating and the frames behind them, so the yard can be told the steel quantity before the ship arrives. Work at anchor is not part of the plan here.

• Ajos container quay — feeder ships on fixed rotations; staged gauging of forward tanks, ice belt and decks over consecutive calls
• Ajos general cargo and forest-product berths — pulp and timber carriers; hold, hatch cover and ballast-tank gauging before and during loading
• Ajos bulk berths — dry-bulk ships; hold and tank-top readings as holds are cleared
• Veitsiluoto mill harbour — ships serving the forest industry; gauging fitted into the mill's loading programme
• Repair yards in southern Finland, Sweden or the southern Baltic — in-dock follow-up of ice-belt readings first taken at Kemi

Ice class, inspection and northern trading conditions

Port state control at Kemi is carried out by Traficom as a member of the Paris MoU, and an inspector boarding a ship that trades to the top of the Bay of Bothnia will look closely at the ice belt, the forepeak and the frames behind them, because that is where winter shows. Under the Finnish-Swedish Ice Class Rules, ice-belt plating and framing are sized for the ice class, with a margin for abrasion and corrosion built in, and when wastage eats into that margin the ship's notation, and with it her eligibility for icebreaker assistance into Kemi, comes into question. Ice class hull gauging at Kemi is therefore about keeping a ship's trading licence for this port.

Forest-product receivers expect pulp and timber delivered dry and undamaged, so ships loading at Kemi need weathertight hatches and holds free from leaks through corroded boundaries with the ballast tanks. Much of the tonnage serving this corner of the Baltic is ice-class short-sea ships that owners keep in service for many years, and older ships carry wider renewal-survey scopes and need condition checks between surveys. Feeder services between Kemi and hub ports elsewhere in the EU run legs that fall under the EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime, and ships arriving from outside the EU carry an Inventory of Hazardous Materials under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation.

Ships trading to Kemi are inside a sulphur emission control area, where fuel must not exceed 0.10% sulphur unless an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber) is fitted. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it are among the fastest-corroding parts of a modern ship, so they belong in the gauging scope at every docking and, on open-loop systems, between dockings.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Kemi

The sequence for a thickness measurement job at Kemi is short and written down, so the yard, the surveyor and the superintendent know who arranges what.

Kemi-Tornio Airport, close to Kemi, is served from Helsinki, and the airports at Rovaniemi and Oulu are alternatives by road when flights are full or disrupted. Our technicians come from India on Schengen visas, which also cover the short trip into Sweden if a ship at a Swedish port is added to the same mobilisation. The ship's agent arranges access to Ajos, and the forest-industry harbour has its own site rules. In winter we plan for cold, darkness and possible delays to flights and icebreaker escort.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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