October the 15th, 2021 - The Croatian Emergency Medical Maritime Service is set to be richer for six fast vessels following the recent signing of a contract with two domestic shipyards.
As Jozo Vrdoljak/Novac/Jutarnji list writes, the Tehnomont Shipyard (Pula) and the Iskra Shipyard 1 from Sibenik have signed a Public Procurement Agreement with the Ministry of Health for the construction of six fast boats for the establishment of emergency medical care on the islands. The work of building and equipping six emergency medical boats is worth around 76.4 million kuna.
The Croatian production consortium won the tender as the most favourable bidder, and that tender was initially announced back in June 2020 by the Ministry of Health for the project "Establishment of an emergency medical maritime service by high-speed boats", funded mostly by EU funds. The agreed construction period is 24 months and the vessels will be stationed in Dubrovnik, Supetar on the island of Brac, Sibenik, Zadar, Rab and Mali Losinj.
The boats will all be purpose-built and equipped for the Croatian Maritime Medical Service and will raise the quality of care for all those who become injured or fall ill on the Croatian coast. They'll also be used for search and rescue missions in cases of maritime accidents and disasters.
"The construction and equipping of six fast boats for the establishment of the Croatian Emergency Maritime Medical Service is a significant step towards even better and more accessible emergency medical care on the Croatian islands," said Minister of Health Vili Beros. The director of the Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine, Maja Grba-Bujevic, pointed out that this is an important project not only for emergency medicine but also because it represents great progress in maritime medicine across Croatia and in the entire Croatian healthcare system.
The Croatian shipyards Iskra and Tehnomont joined, as mentioned, a larger production consortium to make it easier to get this job, and as far as we know, this is probably just the beginning of their cooperation.
"This is the first step in the cooperation of our two shipyards because there's a mutual will to cooperate on new projects. Of course we'll decide on how things will be done from job to job, but in principle there is a will to cooperate. We have extensive experience in shipbuilding, especially in aluminum. We can't deny the fact that our shipyards are not technologically fully equipped, but professionally speaking, our personnel is very capable of building top-quality ships,'' they pointed out from the Tehnomont shipyard in Pula.
Roko Vuletic, one of the two directors of Iskra shipyard 1, points out that the cooperation of these two Croatian shipyards represents great potential for successful competition with the shipbuilding capacities on other markets as well. "This is an interesting niche, so we can enter other markets. In this way, we've increased our competitiveness and gained competitive advantages for both shipyards,'' concluded Vuletic.
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