industrial – Romano Pisciotti Industrial & Business Management

The Liberty ship was a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, the design was adapted by the U.S. for its simple, low-cost construction. Mass produced on an unprecedented scale, the now iconic Liberty ship came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output.

The class was developed to meet British orders for transports to replace those torpedoed by German U-boats. The vessels were purchased both for the U.S. fleet and lend-lease deliveries of war materiel to Britain and the Soviet Union. Eighteen American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945, easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design.

Their production mirrored on a much larger scale the manufacture of the Hog Islander and similar standardized ship types during World War I. The immensity of the effort, the sheer number of ships built, the vaunted role of Rosie the Riveters in their construction, and the survival of some far longer than their original five-year design life, all make them the subject of much continued interest.

Only a handful remain in 2015, two as operational museum ships.

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The first cargo ships passed through Egypt’s New Suez Canal on Saturday in a test-run before it opens next month, state media reported, 11 months after the army began constructing the $8 billion canal alongside the existing 145-year-old Suez Canal.

The new waterway, which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hopes will help expand trade along the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia and give a boost to Egypt’s economy, will be formally inaugurated on Aug. 6.

Sisi wants the canal to become a symbol of national pride and to help combat Egypt’s double-digit unemployment. The old Suez Canal is already a vital source of hard currency for Egypt, which has seen tourism and foreign investment drain away in the years of turmoil since a 2011 uprising.

Three container ships crossed the new waterway, state news agency MENA reported. One was an American ship heading to Egypt’s Port Said from Saudi Arabia, another was a Danish ship sailing to the United States from Singapore, and a Bahraini ship going to Italy from Saudi Arabia.

The exercise took place amid tight security. An insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders on the Suez Canal, has killed hundreds of soldiers and police since 2013. State television said there were helicopters circling above and showed naval vessels escorting the ships.

Mohab Mameesh, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority who led the project, told state television from aboard the first ship that the test-run had been a success.

“This is the first trial crossing but it will be followed by more trials,” he said. “We are 99.2 percent done with everything. We should be completely done in two or three days.”

The existing canal earns Egypt around $5 billion per year. The new canal, which will allow two-way traffic of larger ships, is supposed to increase revenues by 2023 to $15 billion.

It should also reduce navigation time for ships to 11 hours from about 22 hours, Mameesh said last month, making it the fastest such waterway in the world.

The government also plans to build an international industrial and logistics hub nearby that it hopes will eventually make up about a third of the Egyptian economy. (Reporting by Omar Fahmy and Yusri Mohamed; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Jul 25, 2015

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