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House flags of Paraguayan shipping companies

Last modified: 2015-01-17 by alex garofolo
Keywords: paraguay | flota mercante del estado | star: 5 points (red on white) | diamond (white) | cpnu | copanu |
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See also:

Compañía Paraguaya de Navegación de Ultramar S.A. (COPANU)

CPNU house flag
image by Jan Mertens, 29 Sep 2008

Yet another Nigoco firm was Compañía Paraguaya de Navegación de Ultramar S.A. (i.e. Paraguayan Overseas Navigation Co., Ltd) established at Asunción. The following information was found in the 1995 book Van Nievelt, Goudriaan & Co’s Stoomvaart Maatschappij (Nigoco) by F. Haalmeijer & B. Scholten.

Nigoco started sailing to Paraguay in the nineteen-fifties, using small coasters, with a view to break Dodero's quasi-monopoly and to avoid transhipment in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Meat, cotton, wood and other produce were transported but negotiating the River Paraguay was difficult and only possible by daylight.

At the behest of the Paraguayan government a new company was founded in 1960 operating a coaster, painted gray and having a military crew, in a commercial role! Nigoco chartered this ship for the Flota Mercante del Estado del Paraguay, linking Paraguay to Antwerp and Hamburg.

Between 1963 and 1988 the Compañía Paraguaya de Navegación de Ultramar S.A. was an operator of Nigoco ships.

The house flag: basically horizontally divided red-blue-red, the central blue stripe bears a white stripe of one third width; on that central stripe rests a white canton bearing a blue logo composed of the intials CPNU made to resemble an anchor; and to complicate matters the horizontal blue stripe, still bearing its white companion, changes into a vertical one at fly end.

This page lists the Nigoco ships in question:

The company still exists. It is now a fully Paraguayan firm, also named COPANU (C.P.N.U.) engaged in local maritime traffic linking Paraguayan ports to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. Three container ships are operated. In addition there is the local agency for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

The house flag as shown on this site differs from the one drawn by Martin Heere on end-papers of Haalmeijer & Scholten, authors of 1995 book on Nigoco related firms. The red space between the canton and the blue vertical stripe is a square or, to put it differently, at least the drawings show a difference in ratio (earlier 1:2 to current 3:5, I believe).
Jan Mertens, 29 Sep and 1 Oct 2008

Other sites:

Flota Mercante del Estado

FMDE house flag
image by Jarig Bakker, 13 Sep 2005

After Brown’s Flags and Funnels, 1995 [lgr95], Flota Mercante del Estado, Asuncion — white flag, three thin horizontal lines in the center of red-blue-red, idem vertical; in center white diamond outlined red, red 5-pointed star.
Jarig Bakker, 13 Sep 2005

Other sites:

Anything below this line was not added by the editor of this page.