Deltamarin and China’s Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry (XSI) have signed contracts totalling over €11 million for services to the shipyard during vessel construction of the Viking Line LNG-fuelled ro-pax vessel newbuilding. Deltamarin will provide basic and detail design of all disciplines for the yard, support the yard in project management as well as passenger vessel building process requirements, and provide supervision services during the production of the newbuilding project. These will be carried out over 12 months until the vessel’s planned delivery in 2020, with engineering and pre-construction project management carried out via at Deltamarin’s Finnish offices.

The new ro-pax vessel concept is 10% more energy efficient than the Viking Line’s MS Viking Grace, which is currently one of the most energy-efficient and sophisticated ferries on the market, as per Deltamarin’s sales manager, Nina Savijoki. This is due to changes in hull form development, weight control, energy efficiency (including waste heat recovery), and improvement of the general arrangement. It will run on LNG, have two 24 m-high rotor sails, a passenger capacity of 2,800 people, and the length of its cargo lanes will be 1,500 metres. The vessel will serve the Finland-Sweden route, connecting Turku, Åland Islands, and Stockholm as part of the European Union’s Motorways of the Seas project.