Taken from Lloyd's List article, published Monday May 1998

Kasel a kingpin in the salvage world

Despite its feast or famine nature and the harsh economic realities faced by operators, salvage still has a swashbuckling image. Asia Editor EDWARD ION spoke to one Singapore practitioner carrying on the tradion.

RAINER Kasel's story could come straight from the pages of a Joseph Conrad novel.

The German salvage man, who has made Asia his home for more than 20 years, has an intimate knowledge of the seas and coastlines of southeast Asia the like of which Lord Jim himself would have been proud.

From his Singapore base, Mr Kasel has worked on some of the most notorious and difficult salvage operations the region has produced in the past two decades.

The interminable logic of market force, the need for efficiency and strict contract compliance means today's salvors tend to be a corporate-faced lot with shareholders to please and bank balances to dig into when ships fail to get into difficulty.

But with his immense knowledge of southeast Asia, his contacts, the respect his expertise commands and, above all, his passion for the salvage business, Mr Kasel manages to compete with the biggest and best.

And on the evidence of the past couple of months, he is now at the top of his form. Last month his company, Kasel Salvage, completed one of the most difficult salvage operations seen in the region for a long while.

It took him and his team of 100 men just 63 days to salvage the 6,041 gt Indonesian passengership LEUSER after she sank off Samarinda, north of Balik Papan, Borneo, in November.

The four-year-old vessel was struck by a log-carrier just after leaving Samarindo and sank in 16 m of dark, muddy water with strong currents after 30 hours. The 1,000 passengers on board escaped without injury.

The owners and their lawyers set some onerous clauses in the salvage contract. They included a no-cure, no pay basis with the stipulation that the salvage should be completed within 100 days if the salvor was to receive his payment.

Other salvors looked at the offer, including Smit and Semco, but it was Kasel Salvage which clinched the contract despite the competition. Mr Kasel told Lloyd's List: 'Everyone said we were mad to try to do it. It was a long and technically difficult salvage, one of the most difficult I have ever worked on.'

The work included carrying out collision repairs, construction and erection of cantilever arms, the laying of anchors, uprighting and patching of the LEUSER hull as well as pumping, dewatering and towage preparations.

Mr Kasel says the 'no cure, no pay' clause concentrates the minds of salvors wonderfully.

'There are always times when you wake up in the middle of the night and wonder 'what if we cannot do it within the contract time?' But I had every confidence that we could do it and, in fact, it all went remarkably smoothly,' he said.

For a company like Kasel Salvage, the stakes are incredibly high on a contract like the LEUSER. Unlike the big salvage players, Mr Kasel and his team rely on their ability to weigh up a salvage modus operandi as fast as possible. Flexibility, cost control and team work are of the essence.

He said: 'Our outlay for such a job is enormous. For a start, we needed to charter a 300-ton floating crane for two months and there were two pulling barges and four tugs on charter for the whole period.

'We had 12 divers and numerous other technical people involved. In all we had 100 people on the job including Indonesians, Americans, a Canadian and myself.' Mr Kasel, who graduated from the Smit company before going out on his own in Asia, says that relationships are all-important in salvage work in and around southeast Asia.