Tricolor car carrier sent for shredding

Archiv – Dutch salvage company Smit Tak has begun a UK£ 25 million (US$ 40.7 million) project to recover the Tricolor, the Norwegian-owned vessel which sank after a collision off the Belgium coast near Dunkirk in December last year. The ship was famously carrying nearly 3000 cars including Volvos, Saabs and BMWs; these will be stripped and sold as scrap. Dutch salvage company Smit Tak has begun a UK£ 25 million (US$ 40.7 million) project to recover the Tricolor, the Norwegian-owned vessel which sank after a collision off the Belgium coast near Dunkirk in December last year. The ship was famously carrying nearly 3000 cars including Volvos, Saabs and BMWs; these will be stripped and sold as scrap.
The salvage operation involves cutting the 190-metre long ship into nine sections using a diamond-encrusted wire. By mid-August, the first sections of the Tricolor were being carried to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge where ship demolition specialist BVBA Soenen has set up a dock-side shredding facility.
The ship will be broken up into pieces weighing 300 tonnes ready for transportation to Gallometaal in Menem, which expects the ship and its cargo to yield around 12 000 tonnes of HMS 1 and HMS I&II scrap, 500 tonnes of steel machinery and over 3000 tonnes of steel from the cars.