Yantai CIMC Raffles Shipyard located in Shandong Province in eastern China, has cut the first steel for a new LNG-powered roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vessel ordered by Swedish shipping company Wallenius SOL.
“I’m absolutely thrilled that construction has begun. We set the bar high in terms of reliable ocean freight with low environmental impact, and a ship with both the highest ice class and environmental performance shows how we live up to this. As a state-of-the-art vessel, it’s very important for us,” said Ragnar Johansson, Managing Director, WALLENIUS SOL
The ship will be 242 metres long (LOA) with a beam of 35.2 metres and a capacity of 5,800 lane metres. It will have a top speed of 20 knots and a cruise speed of 16 knots. It was designed by Wallenius Marine in collaboration with Danish shipbuilder Knud E. Hansen to handle the tough, sometimes Arctic, conditions in the Gulf of Bothnia.
It will have the highest ice class, be LNG fuelled and enter operation in the autumn of 2021. “The ship will form an extremely important part of our fleet,” added Ragnar Johansson.
Wallenius Marine visited a number of shipyards worldwide before it commissioned CIMC Raffles. “They are renowned for their work with offshore structures. CIMC Raffles is at the very forefront of engineering know-how, so we feel extremely confident about the build,” says Per Westerdal, project manager at Wallenius Marine.
In mid-March, Wallenius Marine, very wisely, opened a local office at the Yantai shipyard. It will be fully manned by June and will allow them to monitor the process closely and collaborate with CIMC Raffles. In June, construction will begin on a sister ship to the one now beginning to take shape.
According to the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, the new ships will achieve
fifty percent reduction in fuel consumption per transported unit, 60% reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases per transported unit, 98% reduction in sulphur dioxides (SOx),85% reduction in nitrogen oxides (NOx) and 95% reduction in emissions of particles. Source: Report U6059
