Viking Line to order another LNG ferry

Finnish shipping company Viking Line on Wednesday said it has signed a letter of intent with Chinese Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry to build a new LNG-powered ferry.

The deal is worth about 190 million euros and the passenger vessel is expected to be delivered in the spring of 2020.

Viking Line plans to sign a final agreement during the spring of 2017. 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, Viking Line said in its statement.

The new vessel is planned to serve the Turku-Åland Islands-Stockholm route.

It 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 said it will hire Scandinavian architects for the interior design.

“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,” said Jan Hanses, Viking Line’s CEO.

“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,” the CEO added.