by Playfuls Staff |
7th February 2006
For the past few years, there’s been a trend of making cruise ships bigger, better and more luxurious. And the latest ship announced by U.S.-Norwegian Royal Caribbean Cruises will be the single biggest commercial ship ever built. [more]
Thus, according to Reuters, Shipbuilder Aker Yards has won the biggest ever commercial ship order, clinching a 900 million euros ($1.1 billion) for the huge new cruise ship, it said on Monday.
"The contract price being approximately 900 million euros, this is the most valuable ship ever ordered in the history of commercial shipbuilding," Aker Yards ASA said in a statement.
The contract includes an option for a second similar ship, Aker Yards said.
Developed under the cryptic nom-de-mer of Project Genesis, the craft is 154 feet wide, 240 feet high and 1,180 feet long. Up-end that figure and consider that New York City's mighty Empire State Building is 1,250 feet. Its massive bulk will top by 43% percent Aker's Freedom of the Seas, a boat slated to be the world's largest cruise ship when it is delivered to Royal Caribbean in April.
The ship will be built at the group's yards in Finland for delivery in autumn 2009 and will take 5,800 man years to complete, Aker Yards said.
"This ship will perfectly fit the Turku shipyard. The deal means jobs will be secured until 2009, and the situation looks very good," Yrjo Julin, head of Aker Yards' Finnish cruise and ferry operations, told a news conference in Helsinki.
While Julin said it was obvious that the order would need more workers, he declined to say how many. The Turku shipyard on the west coast of Finland currently employs about 2,000, with another 2,500 being employed by sub-contractors.
"The new order will also bring jobs to around 600 sub-contractors of which 80-90 percent are Finnish," Julin said.
In addition, Julin said the Finnish yards would need to boost its own design engineering staff to 900 from 600. "That is a challenge but not impossible," he said.
Julin said the deal depended on purchase and credit guarantees, in which Finnish export credit agency Finnvera and the Finnish state have a central role.
Royal Caribbean, the world's second biggest cruise company after U.S. Carnival, said it estimated the total cost of the ship to be about $230,000 per berth, roughly comparable to other large cruise vessels despite significant enhancements.
Aker Yards, which has 13 yards in Norway, Finland, Germany, Romania and Brazil, has built a total of 17 new ships for Royal Caribbean since it delivered the cruise ship "Song of Norway" in 1970.
Last Thursday, Royal Caribbean posted a narrower-than-expected fourth-quarter loss as well as record overall 2005 earnings, as reported by Bloomberg. The leisure company also augured strong profit for 2006. Such cruises offer services like wake-up calls. This news may constitute such a call for Mickey Arison. The billionaire investor is the chairman and CEO of Royal's key rival Carnival. The tycoon's firm announced last month that its "superliners" Sensation and Holiday, currently on charter to the U.S. government as part of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, will each undergo a multi-million-dollar sprucing-up prior to re-entering service this spring.
