Russia’s Sovcomflot (SCF Group) celebrates a significant birthday this year, with last month marking 30 years since the USSR’s Ministry of Maritime Fleet signed the order that established the company.
To mark the event, the outfit’s flagship 172,600-cbm, ice-breaking LNG carrier Christophe de Margerie (built 2017), built for the Arctic-based Yamal LNG project, has been immortalised in a commemorative stamp featured on a first day cover issued last week.
The stamp is dated the day Sovcomflot hooked up with Russian energy company Novatek to form a new strategic partnership to develop their shipping cooperation in the Arctic, as part of the country's moves to develop its polar regions.
Back when Sovcomflot began on 3 June 1998, aside from the ministry, SCF Group's founders were the Far-Eastern, Black Sea, Novorossiysk, Latvian, Baltic, and Soviet Danube Shipping companies. The first vessels purchased were two 40,000-dwt bulkers — the Sovfrakht and Sovinflot.
More than 100 vessels have been bought since then, with the Christophe de Margerie probably the most groundbreaking.
But the company is not stopping its innovation there. On 25 July, Sovcomflot is due to take delivery of another stamp-worthy candidate and a further new-world first for shipping when its LNG-fuelled 114,000-dwt aframax tanker newbuilding Gagarin Prospect is delivered and begins a charter to Shell.
