Finnish shipping company Viking Line Abp is building on its success with M/S Viking Grace, it’s first Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) vessel that went into service on the Turku–Stockholm route in January 2013, by signing a Letter of Intent (LOI) to construct another LNG-powered passenger vessel.
The LOI is with the Chinese company Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry Co. Ltd. The vessel is proposed for delivery in the spring of 2020. The aim is to sign a final agreement during the spring of 2017. The total investment is about 190 million euros (USD >200m). The letter of intent also includes an option for an additional vessel.
The vessel is intended to be a collaborative project, and the plan is to engage a number of Finnish and other European suppliers, including Deltamarin, Wärtsilä and ABB Marine as well as a number of others. The new vessel is planned to serve the Turku (Finland)-Åland Islands (Finland)-Stockholm (Sweden) route. The vessel will be 218 metres in length and have a gross registered tonnage of 63,000 tonnes. Passenger capacity will be 2,800 people, and the length of its cargo lanes will be 1,500 metres. Viking Line will hire Scandinavian architects for the interior design.
Viking Grace bunkers LNG from Seagas in Port of Stockholm
“Our intention is for the vessel to run on liquefied natural gas (LNG). We have excellent experience with this from the M/S Viking Grace, the first large LNG-powered passenger vessel in the world. Great emphasis has been placed in the planning work on environmentally sound solutions, including new innovative energy-efficient applications. Many years of planning work have gone into this newbuilding project in conjunction with the European Union’s Motorways of the Seas project under the scope of the Connecting Europe Facility funding instrument, which has also included the Port of Turku and the Ports of Stockholm,” says Jan Hanses, Viking Line’s CEO.
(Source: Viking Line)
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