The new Dutch advanced training ship for inland navigation, the ‘Ab Initio’, was briefly in Antwerp on Tuesday 13 June 2023. Flanders is aiming to build a similar ship here.
The STC Group, Rotterdam-based vertical education and knowledge institution for shipping, transport and port industry, is working closely with Antwerp’s shipping school on the Left Bank. “This is the most advanced training ship for inland navigation in Europe,” Smallegange says proudly. “We are cooperation partners with the shipping school and often work together on educational development projects.”
Similarly, a dozen students from the shipping school paid an extended visit to the ship on Tuesday afternoon, 13 June. In turn, the students who arrived in Antwerp with the ‘Ab Initio’ visited Seafar, the Antwerp company known for automated and semi-autonomous inland navigation.
Progressive
The 67-metre-long ‘Ab Initio’ is fully electrically powered, has an extensive battery pack that allows it to sail emission-free for four hours. The vessel has several generators, a battery pack, 200 m² of solar panels, a wind turbine and a waste water treatment system on board. In addition to all the technology, there are classrooms, 33 comfortable cabins anda field lab with windows overlooking the engine room.
The ship has already been prepared to run on hydrogen in the near future. “For that, we still have to arrange a special permission, because sailing with hydrogen and pupils on board the same ship is not allowed at the moment,” Smallegange says. “A very thick dossier has been delivered to the European institutions for this and it will be discussed in August in Strasbourg.”
Partners and sponsors
The ‘Ab Initio’ could only be realised through the support of a lot of partners, sponsors and institutions. “The ship costs about €8 million, which is a lot of money. Fortunately, a lot of suppliers thought it was very important for their products to be used on board. So we were able to save a lot of money.”
“Our training ship ‘Themis II’ has in a way served as a model for the construction of the ship,” says Roel Buisseret, director of the Cenflumarin shipping school. “I keep reading in the Flemish government statement that inland navigation is very important. If there could be a combination of Flemish government support, European funds and a bit of private cooperation, there should definitely be a possibility to also have such a ship built sometime in the near future.”
This ship works like a magnet on young people
“We now have four hundred students for our inland navigation training in the Netherlands, which is a lot,” Smallegange says. “This ship works like a magnet on the youth. We commissioned this ship in September 2022 and since then we have had another extra class of inland navigation students. When we organise an open day, there is a very long queue of interested people lining up far outside. Everyone wants to see this ship,” Smallegange concludes.
Influence on intake
“We have been saying for a very long time that inland navigation is a very beautiful profession. You can clearly hear here that this ship has a positive influence on new inflow into the sector,” says Sophie Ringoot, CEO of Rederij Ringoot. “Belgium can certainly take an example from this, as it is a beautiful ship. If the government would do its bit to build such a ship, I think the sector will also do its bit.”
“If we compare what we have in Flanders, we are still a bit jealous of the ‘Ab Initio’,” says Edwin Verberght of CITBO, the cooperative of inland tanker operators. “We also notice that this attracts a lot of students in the Netherlands and we really need a lot of people in the sector. It is a flagship, sustainable, very innovative. It would be very nice if we could have that in Flanders as well.”
