Classification:	DNV Det Norske Veritas Stiftelsen Det Norske Veritas is a classification society organized as a foundation, with the objective of "Safeguarding life, property, and the environment". The organization's history goes back to 1864, when the foundation was established in Norway to inspect and evaluate the technical condition...  1A1 ICE-1A+ Pusher and Pusher/Barge Unit E0
Main engines:	2 × Wärtsilä Wärtsilä Wärtsilä is a Finnish corporation which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets. The core products of Wärtsilä include large combustion engines... -Sulzer Sulzer (manufacturer) Sulzer Ltd. is a Swiss industrial engineering and manufacturing firm, founded by Salomon Sulzer-Bernet in 1775 and established as Sulzer Brothers Ltd. in 1834 in Winterthur, Switzerland. Today it is a publicly owned company with international subsidiaries...  6ZAL40 (2 × 3,840 kW)
Auxiliary generators:	2 × Wärtsilä-Vasa 4R22HF (2 × 590 kW) Strömberg Stromberg -People:*Lyndon Stromberg, American sculptor and designer*Karl Stromberg, the villain in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me*Joseph R. Stromberg, historian with the Ludwig von Mises Institute*Glenn Strömberg, Swedish soccer player...  shaft generator (900 kVA)

Rautaruukki is a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 pusher vessel

Towboat

Not to be confused with the historic boat type with the same name, also called horse-drawn boat.A towboat is a boat designed for pushing barges or car floats. Towboats are characterized by a square bow with steel knees for pushing and powerful engines...

 owned and operated by ESL Shipping. It is part of the Finnpusku

Finnpusku

Finnpusku is an integrated tug and barge system owned and operated by ESL Shipping, a Finnish shipping company that specializes in bulk cargo transports in the Baltic Sea. The system was developed in the 1980s by Finnlines, another Finnish shipping company that also managed the vessels until 2003,...

integrated tug and barge system developed in the 1980s by Finnlines

Finnlines

Finnlines Plc is a Finnish shipping company that operates freight throughout Northern Europe as well as passenger services in the Baltic Sea. In the past, Finnlines has operated ships under the brands Finncarriers, Finnflow Systems, Finnjet Lines, and FG Shipping Oy Ab...

, a Finnish shipping company that also managed the vessel until 2003, in co-operation with Rautaruukki

Rautaruukki

Rautaruukki Corporation is a Finnish company, headquartered in Helsinki, which manufactures and supplies metal-based components and systems to the construction and engineering industries....

 for the transportation needs of the steel company. Rautaruukki, built by Hollming in Rauma

Rauma

-Other:* Rauma dialect* Rauma class missile boat, a class of Finnish Fast Attack Craft* HNoMS Rauma , the second ship of the Norwegian Otra class minesweepers...

, Finland, was delivered on 30 October 1986 and has since been used mainly to supply raw materials to the Raahe Steel Works.

The Rautaruukki has an identical sister vessel, Steel

Steel (pusher)

Steel is a Finnish pusher vessel owned and operated by ESL Shipping. It is part of the Finnpusku integrated tug and barge system developed in the 1980s by Finnlines, a Finnish shipping company that also managed the vessel until 2003, in co-operation with Rautaruukki for the transportation needs of...

, which was delivered in 1987 as Finn. The vessel capsized in 1990, but was rebuilt, renamed and returned to service in 1991.

Development and construction

The development of the Finnpusku system dates back to the 1960s when Finnlines developed the first version of the icegoing pusher-barge system. While the concept was not pursued further due to various problems, an upgraded version was developed in the 1970s. In the late 1970s Rautaruukki Oy began transporting raw materials to the steel mill

Steel mill

A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel.Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It is produced in a two-stage process. First, iron ore is reduced or smelted with coke and limestone in a blast furnace, producing molten iron which is either cast into pig iron or...

 in Raahe

Raahe

Raahe is a town and municipality of Finland. Founded by Swedish statesman and Governor General of Finland Count Per Brahe the younger in 1649, it is one of 10 historic wooden towns remaining in Finland. Examples of other Finnish historic wooden towns are Kaskinen , Old Rauma, Porvoo , Jakobstad ,...

 by towed barges and found them suitable for the steel company's transportation needs. However, due to the poor maneuverability of the barges and their inability to operate in winter conditions Rautaruukki decided to investigate if it would be possible to design a pusher-barge system that could also be operated in ice conditions. When Finnlines was consulted, it presented the Finnpusku system it had developed and the two companies signed a development contract. Later Finnlines performed several feasibility studies which showed that a pusher-barge system would be the most economical and efficient method of transporting bulk cargoes on the relatively short routes of the Baltic Sea

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

.

The initial plan was to establish shipping companies for each vessel of the Finnpusku system under the joint ownership of several large Finnish industrial and shipping companies, including Rautaruukki and Finnlines, which would also manage the vessels. However, due to delays in negotiations Rautaruukki, concerned about the continuous supply of raw materials to the Raahe Steel Works, decided to order one pusher and two barges for itself and signed a building contract with Hollming on 27 September 1984. The first pusher of the Finnpusku system, Rautaruukki, was laid down on 27 June and launched on 20 December 1985.

Pusher Rautaruukki and barges Kalla and Tasku, built by a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 shipyard Estaleiros Navais de Setubal in Setúbal

Setúbal

Setúbal is the main city in Setúbal Municipality in Portugal with a total area of 172.0 km² and a total population of 118,696 inhabitants in the municipality. The city proper has 89,303 inhabitants....

 and outfitted in Rauma, were delivered to Rautaruukki on 31 October 1986. When the two pushers and five barges of the Finnpusku system entered service in 1986–1987, it was estimated that they would carry one third of the ten million tons of bulk cargo

Bulk cargo

Bulk cargo is commodity cargo that is transported unpackaged in large quantities. This cargo is usually dropped or poured, with a spout or shovel bucket, as a liquid or as a mass of relatively small solids , into a bulk carrier ship's hold, railroad car, or tanker truck/trailer/semi-trailer body...

 arriving in Finland by sea every year.

Career

While the jointly owned pusher Finn was time-chartered

Chartering (shipping)

Chartering is an activity within the shipping industry. In some cases a charterer may own cargo and employ a shipbroker to find a ship to deliver the cargo for a certain price, called freight rate. Freight rates may be on a per-ton basis over a certain route or alternatively may be expressed in...

 by the transportation department of Rautaruukki only when the steel company required additional capacity, the Rautaruukki was used since the beginning solely to supply the Raahe Steel Works with raw materials. The pusher-barge combinations transported different bulk cargoes from various ports of the Baltic Sea, such as limestone from the port of Storugns

Kappelshamn

Kappelshamn is a minor locality situated in Gotland Municipality, Gotland County, Sweden, with 112 inhabitants in 2005 The village, located northeast of Visby and north of Slite, is mainly known for its race track, Gotland Ring...

 in Gotland

Gotland

Gotland is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden; it is Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, the region makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area...

, iron ore concentrate from Luleå

Luleå

- Transportation :Local buses are run by .A passenger train service is available from Luleå Centralstation on Sweden's national SJ railway service northbound to Narvik on the Norwegian coast, or southbound to Stockholm. See Rail transport in Sweden....

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, and coal from various Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

an ports.

After initial issues were solved, the Finnpusku system was found out to be suitable for the transportation needs of Rautaruukki in both port-to-port transport and lightening

Ship-to-ship cargo transfer

A ship-to-ship transfer operation is the transfer of cargo between seagoing ships positioned alongside each other, either while stationary or underway. Cargoes typically transferred via STS methods include crude oil, liquefied gas , bulk cargo, and petroleum products.Most of cargo operations are...

 large bulk carrier

Bulk carrier

A bulk carrier, bulk freighter, or bulker is a merchant ship specially designed to transport unpackaged bulk cargo, such as grains, coal, ore, and cement in its cargo holds. Since the first specialized bulk carrier was built in 1852, economic forces have fueled the development of these ships,...

s outside the port of Raahe. By the end of 1987 the amount of cargo transported by the Finnpusku system, 7.5 million tons per year, had grown beyond the capability of the transportation department that was under the central administration of the steel company, so on 1 May 1988 a subsidiary company, JIT-Trans, was established to deal with both the parent company's own cargoes and external shipping business.

In 1989, JIT-Trans signed a long-term contract with SSAB

SSAB

SSAB Swedish Steel AB , or simply SSAB is a Swedish company, formed in 1978 and specialised in processing raw material to steel. Industrivärden is the largest shareholder.-Swedish operations:...

 for the transportation of iron ore concentrate and pellets from Luleå to Oxelösund

Oxelösund

Oxelösund is a locality and the seat of Oxelösund Municipality in Södermanland County, Sweden with 10,843 inhabitants in 2005.- History :The harbour at Oxelösund has been used for at least 500 years. In the 19th century, an increased extraction from the Mining district of Central Sweden , made...

. Since Finland and Sweden had no reciprocity

Reciprocity (international relations)

In international relations and treaties, the principle of reciprocity states that favours, benefits, or penalties that are granted by one state to the citizens or legal entities of another, should be returned in kind....

 agreement for cabotage

Cabotage

Cabotage is the transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country by a vessel or an aircraft registered in another country. Originally starting with shipping, cabotage now also covers aviation, railways and road transport...

, part of the Finnpusku system had to be transferred to the Swedish Register of Ships. Rautaruukki sold pusher Rautaruukki and barges Kalla and Tasku to new joint shipping companies formed by the Finnish companies' Swedish subsidiaries. Despite the changes in ownership and flag Finnlines retained the management of the vessels through its Swedish subsidiary.

Rautaruukki returned under the Finnish flag in 1996 after the ownership was transferred to a Finnish financial institution Merita Rahoitus (nowadays known as Nordea

Nordea

Nordea Bank AB is a Stockholm-based financial services group operating in Northern Europe. The bank is the result of the successive mergers and acquisitions of the Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian banks of Nordbanken, Merita Bank, Unibank and Kreditkassen that took place between 1997 and 2000...

 Rahoitus).
In July 2003 a seven-year contract for the transportation of raw materials in the Baltic Sea was signed between JIT-Trans and Aspo Group. As part of the agreement, worth 140 million euro

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

s, the ownership and management of the Finnpusku system was transferred to ESL Shipping, a subsidiary of the Aspo Group. In February 2011 ESL Shipping signed a new long-term contract with Rautaruukki for the transportation of the raw materials of the steel industry in the Baltic Sea. The pushers and barges of the Finnpusku system were docked at Arctech Helsinki Shipyard

Arctech Helsinki Shipyard

Arctech Helsinki Shipyard is a shipbuilding company in Helsinki, Finland. It was founded in late 2010 as a joint venture between STX Finland Cruise Oy and United Shipbuilding Corporation, when the latter purchased half of the Hietalahti shipyard...

 and modernized by STX Finland Lifecycle Services during the summer of 2011. The Rautaruukki arrived at Helsinki for modernization in late June and left in early August.

Unlike the other pushers of the Finnpusku system, Rautaruukki has not been involved in a severe accident. Its sister vessel, Finn, capsized with the barge Baltic in 1990 with a loss of eight lives and Herakles

Herakles (pusher)

Herakles was a pusher vessel owned by Finnish towing and marine salvage company Alfons Håkans Oy Ab. The ship, originally built as salvage tug Into in 1967, was converted to a pusher in 1991 to be chartered to Rautaruukki Oyj and later ESL Shipping Ltd as the third pusher vessel for Finnpusku, a...

, a salvage tug converted to a pusher in 1991, sank with the barge Bulk in 2004.

General characteristics

The overall length of the Rautaruukki is 41.7 metres (136.8 ft) and its length between perpendiculars is 40.2 metres (131.9 ft). The breadth of the hull is 14.37 metres (47.1 ft) at the waterline, but the maximum breadth of the vessel due to the bridge wings is 15.5 metres (50.9 ft). The draught and depth to the upper deck, 6.7 metres (22 ft) and 10 metres (32.8 ft) respectively, are the same as those of a fully laden barge. The displacement of the pusher is 2,230 tons and deadweight tonnage

Deadweight tonnage

Deadweight tonnage is a measure of how much weight a ship is carrying or can safely carry. It is the sum of the weights of cargo, fuel, fresh water, ballast water, provisions, passengers, and crew...

 445 tons, and its gross tonnage

Gross tonnage

Gross tonnage is a unitless index related to a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage is different from gross register tonnage...

 is 1,554 and net tonnage

Net tonnage

Net tonnage is a dimensionless index calculated from the total moulded volume of the ship's cargo spaces by using a mathematical formula...

 446.

The Rautaruukki is classified

Classification society

A classification society is a non-governmental organization that establishes and maintains technical standards for the construction and operation of ships and offshore structures...

 by Det Norske Veritas

Det Norske Veritas

Stiftelsen Det Norske Veritas is a classification society organized as a foundation, with the objective of "Safeguarding life, property, and the environment". The organization's history goes back to 1864, when the foundation was established in Norway to inspect and evaluate the technical condition...

 with a class notation of +1A1 ICE-1A+ Pusher and Pusher/Barge Unit E0. It has the highest Finnish-Swedish ice class

Finnish-Swedish ice class

The Finnish-Swedish ice class is an ice class assigned to a vessel operating in first-year ice in the Baltic Sea and calling Finnish or Swedish ports...

, 1A Super, which means that the pusher is designed to operate in difficult ice conditions both alone and when coupled to a barge mainly without icebreaker assistance. While usually connected to a barge, the Rautaruukki also capable of operating independently. However, the low metacentric height

Metacentric height

The metacentric height is a measurement of the static stability of a floating body. It is calculated as the distance between the centre of gravity of a ship and its metacentre . A larger metacentric height implies greater stability against overturning...

 of the pusher, only 0.5–0.6 m (1.6–2 ft), results in large roll amplitudes and pitching, making the vessel very uncomfortable in severe weather. For this reason short transit journeys without a barge are done only when it is absolutely necessary.

The Finnpusku system uses a unique rigid coupling system, Wärtsilä Marine Locomotive, which consists of two hydraulic locking pins, one on each side of the pusher, and one fixed pin in the bow. The pusher can be connected to the barge at three different levels, removing the need to ballast the barge to the same draught as the pusher when not carrying cargo. In addition to mechanical coupling the pusher is connected to the barge by several electrical cables on the starboard side and flexible pipes on the port side. The latter allow the pusher's fuel and freshwater tanks to be topped up from the much larger storage tanks of the barge.

One of the most prominent features of the pusher is the high superstructure rising 22 metres (72 ft) from the waterline. In addition to accommodation, mess and dayroom for the crew of nine, it initially housed two bridges at different levels. The lower bridge on the third deck was originally intended to be used when the pusher is operating on its own without a barge, allowing more comfortable conditions for the crew — the chairs in the upper bridge on the seventh deck were equipped with seatbelts due to the large motions of the vessel when operating independently. However, the lower bridge was rarely used and the space was later converted to an office. The upper bridge, with bridge wings extending beyond the pusher's breadth, is equipped to allow one man bridge operation.

Power and propulsion

Propulsion power is provided by two six-cylinder Sulzer

Sulzer (manufacturer)

Sulzer Ltd. is a Swiss industrial engineering and manufacturing firm, founded by Salomon Sulzer-Bernet in 1775 and established as Sulzer Brothers Ltd. in 1834 in Winterthur, Switzerland. Today it is a publicly owned company with international subsidiaries...

 6ZAL40 4-stroke medium-speed diesel engines running on heavy fuel oil, manufactured under licence by Wärtsilä

Wärtsilä

Wärtsilä is a Finnish corporation which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets. The core products of Wärtsilä include large combustion engines...

, each with a maximum continuous output of 3840 kW at 380 rpm, giving the combination a service speed of 13.4 knots. A Lohmann & Stolterfoht reduction gearbox connects the main engines to a propeller shaft driving a 4.7-metre (4.7 metres (15.4 ft)) four-bladed Rauma-Repola Liaaen controllable-pitch propeller and a 900 kVa Strömberg

Stromberg

-People:*Lyndon Stromberg, American sculptor and designer*Karl Stromberg, the villain in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me*Joseph R. Stromberg, historian with the Ludwig von Mises Institute*Glenn Strömberg, Swedish soccer player...

 shaft generator used to power the bow thruster in the barge. The main engines are equipped with steam-generating exhaust boilers to improve the overall efficiency of the power plant. Electricity is provided by two Wärtsilä-Vasa 4R22HF diesel engines, each producing 590 kW at 1,000 rpm, that are connected to 710 kVa Strömberg alternators. The auxiliary generating sets are mounted side by side above the propeller shaft due to the narrow hull. A 158 kW Volvo Penta

Volvo Penta

Volvo Penta was founded in 1907 in conjunction with the production of the first marine engine, B1. The Penta company soon became an established internal combustion engine manufacturer, which in 1927 delivered the engine to Volvo's first passenger car....

TMD102A emergency generator is located on the main deck level in the smoke stack.