Pasig River group to spend P300M

Nautical Transport Services Corp., a joint venture between a local group and an Australian shipping firm which won an exclusive franchise to operate the Pasig River ferry system, will easily have to spend up to P300 million for the ferry transport business.

Nautical Transport, however, also has plans to eventually expand its investments and go into the construction of Roll-on Roll-off (RORO) ships, according to Robert Scott Cole, sole director of Sydney Side Cruises, the Australian joint venture partner in Nautical Transport.

Sydney Side Cruises has been operating in Sydney for 20 years with Cole having taken over the operations in the past five and a half years.

Cole told The STAR that Nautical Transport plans to construct its own ferry boats and eventually RORO vehicles for domestic maritime use.

Nautical, Cole clarified, would actually subcontract the construction to Herma Shipping based on Nautical’s design.

However, Cole could not yet disclose how much investment would be made by Nautical for the RORO ships as talks are still in the feasibility stage.

Cole’s Filipino partners in Nautical are Eduardo Bondad, Atlanta Industrial and Penta Capital Investments.

The P200-million to P300-million capital expenditure estimate for the Pasig River ferry operation, according to most of the bidders in yesterday’s bidding, is conservative based alone on the projected cost of the boats of between P7 million to P10 million depending on the size and passenger capacity of the boats.

The Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission (PRRC) has specified that the prospective ferry operator must field at least 10 boats in its first year of operation, but at least 18 boats should be in service during the life of the ferry project.

Cole said that Nautical is planning to deploy boats that would have a capacity of 150 passengers.

Nautical Transport, Cole said, plans to construct its own boats based on a catamaran-style that would be both fuel efficient and environmentally safe.

The planned ferry boats, Cole boasted, would cut down fuel cost to just 30 percent of overall expenses instead of the current 50-percent to 60-percent fuel cost of using the more expensive aluminum hull boats.