Coating specialist repairs and maintains ships

One of South Africa’s largest and better-equipped marine anticorrosion project engineering companies, Nautilus Marine, has developed an international reputation for quality services to ship owners and industrialists. As part of this reputation, the company offers a 24-hour service, seven days a week. Based in the port of Cape Town, Nautilus Mar-ine has teams that work all over the world and, thus far, has played an important role in the oil and gas industry – where the focus has been on oilrigs, working boats, refineries and pipelines. “We have become a specialist in coating solutions, have 43 years of experience in this field and are continually looking for ways to improve ser-vice levels to the market,” says Nautilus Marine MD Tjaart van der Walt. “We also have vast experience in shipbuilding and the repair and maintenance of ships,” he adds. Most of the work on ships has been maintenance-related and this has taken place in and around Cape Town. The company operates from three drydocks – Sturrock, Robertson and Simon’s Town – and has completed work for various clients, including Safmarine, Maersk Sealand, Pride Foramer, Globe Engineering, DCD Dorbyl, the South African Navy, De Beers, I&J Fishing, and Viking Shipping. The company’s focus includes working on industrial structures and tanks both above and below ground, and clients in this area include Saldanha Steel, South African Nylon Spinners, local municipalities and Metal Box. Nautilus Marine’s endeavours have included working in the Congo, Angola and South Africa for large organisations like Texaco, Chevron, Mossgas, Pride International, Tide Waters, Trans- ocean, PetroSA, BP South Africa and Caltex Refinery.

Most of the company’s work has been cleaning and coating but, due to continual requests from its clients, specialised work, like ultrahigh-pressure water-jetting, abrasive cutting, hot and cold insulation, hot metal spraying, fluid and sludge pumping, heat-exchanger cleaning and chemical cleaning, have become part of the com- pany’s services. Nautilus Marine is committed to dealing fairly and with integrity in its conduct in all business activities. The company encourages its employees to be committed to high moral, ethical, technical and legal standards, and to reject any business practices that are seen to be improper.

Established about 43 years ago and situated in Cape Town, the company boasts highly-experienced technical teams and services are available on a worldwide basis.

The coating and anticorrosion systems that the company uses include air- and airless-spraying systems, fire-protection spraying, hot-metal spraying and heavy-duty screening.

Cleaning and corrosion-removal systems, high pressure and ultrahigh pressure water jetting, wet abrasive blasting, mechanical scaling, dry abrasive blasting (open or with vacuum), and underwater hull cleaning are also carried out.

The company does underwater cleaning and scanning, the preparation of all tanks for gas-free certification, ultrahigh-pressure abrasive cutting, pumping fluids and sledges, and hot and cold insulation.

“Most of these maintenance services can be carried out at sea,” says Van der Walt.