A cargo ship at JadeWeserPoint in 2012. Photo courtesy JadeWeserPort Realisierungs GmbH & Co. KG

By Nicholas Brautlecht

(Bloomberg) — The 33,000 containers handled at JadeWeserPort since Germany’s only deepwater docks opened for business in September are a far cry from the annual 2.7 million forecast when state governments embarked on the 10 billion-euro ($13.1 billion) project a decade ago.

That’s not deterring policy makers from pressing ahead with the development of the harbor, whose debut coincided with the shipping industry’s worst crisis in decades. The decline has turned it into a ghost port that relies on two weekly services from the operator’s main shareholder, A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, to keep the 400 people that work there in employment.

“It is not yet the success story we wished for, but it was right to build the port,” Deputy Economy Minister Hans-Joachim Otto said in an interview on April 25. Otto, who coordinates the federal government’s maritime policy, expects the shipping industry to overcome the overcapacity and low charter rates that are crippling returns by the end of 2014.

The port’s troubles haven’t dissuaded investors from buying the bonds of operator Eurogate GmbH, a unit of which holds a 40- year lease on the harbor and which runs 10 container terminals from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

Eurogate’s 150 million euros of 6.75 percent perpetual bonds, with a May 2017 call date, have returned 28.8 percent since its lowest on June 26, Bloomberg data show. That compares with a 17.4 percent average return of bonds included in the Bank of America Merrill Lynch CCC & Lower Global High Yield European Issuer Index.

More Investment

Bremen and Lower Saxony, the two German states that constructed JadeWeserPort, also aren’t discouraged by the slow start. They announced on April 19 that they will spend 2 million euros to examine the technical and economic feasibility of a second container port north of JadeWeserPort by early 2015.

When more than 1,000 guests, including Economy Minister Philipp Roesler, gathered to inaugurate the port on Sept. 21, Eurogate forecast that the potential 2.7 million annual container turnover could later double.

Its 1.7 kilometer-long quay can handle four large container ships at once. Eight giant cranes, among the world’s biggest, can stretch over 25 rows of containers. The port’s depth of 18 meters (59 feet) means the world’s biggest vessels can dock regardless of the tide.

The new Maersk vessels will have the capacity to carry 18,000 standard containers, enough to ship 111 million pairs of running shoes. They will overtake CMA CGM SA’s Marco Polo, with a 16,000-TEU capacity, when the first ship sets sail in July.

Carbon Cuts

Maersk says the ship’s size, coupled with a twin-propeller propulsion system, will cut fuel burn 35 percent while halving carbon emissions.

“The battlefield for the ultra-large container ships with a capacity of more than 10,000 standard containers is the Far East to Europe trade,” said Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at shipping association Bimco in Bagsvaerd, Denmark. “This is where they have to prove that they are much more efficiently run and thus also provide liners with an economic upside compared with those who run a less efficient fleet.”

The newcomer will have no trouble calling at Wilhelmshaven when fully loaded and 14.5 meters deep in the water. That gives JadeWeserPort an advantage over Hamburg, which can’t accommodate vessels of that size at low tide.

Still, it may be some time before JadeWeserPort welcomes the first super-ship. So far, the logistics area, the size of 224 soccer fields, has only been able to attract one major customer.

Fruit Truckloads

Nordfrost GmbH, Germany’s biggest deep-freeze logistics company, handles an average 50 truckloads of fruit, carpets and other goods at the site every day.

Eurogate is relying on Maersk, a unit of which owns a 30 percent stake in the JadeWeserPort operations company, to keep workers at the quay busy. The only two weekly services calling at Wilhelmshaven are run by units of Copenhagen-based Maersk.

One of them, Seago Line, operates smaller-sized feeder ships from Wilhelmshaven to St. Petersburg via the Finnish port of Kotka. Maersk’s Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container carrier, runs the other service, which transports goods from the Far East with stops in Japan, China and Malaysia.

“At the start, Maersk and Seago Line expected to do more in Wilhelmshaven,” said Ulf Langschwager, managing director of Seago Line Germany. “Now I believe we will hardly see the volumes we initially anticipated this year.”

Thilo Heinrich, head of trade and marketing at Maersk Line’s German unit, said the crises buffeting the industry couldn’t have been predicted when the plan was hatched more than a decade ago.

Naval Base

“The volume forecasts date back 10 years to 12 years and not a few months,” Heinrich said. “We had the financial crisis in 2009, followed by the shipping crisis, which has all negatively affected the market.”

Bremen and Lower Saxony spent around 600 million euros to transform the former naval base during the two world wars and build docks, creating new ground by pumping sand and dredging entry and landing points at Wilhelmshaven.

Eurogate and Maersk invested a further 350 million euros on cranes, trolleys, technology infrastructure and buildings to lure the new generation of container ships away from competing northern European harbors such as Antwerp, Le Havre and Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest.

Yet of the 33,000 standard containers loaded and unloaded from September 2012 through March this year, only 7,000 were in the first three months of this year.

More Megaships

“The shipping industry suffers from overcapacity and there are more mega-ships coming into the market this year,” said Thomas Wybierek, a shipping analyst at Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale in Hanover. “Furthermore, Chinese growth is below expectations, the euro zone is stuck in crisis and there are no stimuli from the US.”

The European Commission expects 2013 will end in a recession for the European Union for the second consecutive year. China’s economy expanded 7.7 percent in the first quarter, trailing analysts’ forecasts and slipping from a 7.9 percent pace in the previous period.

The weaker-than expected-start meant Eurogate had to take measures to rein in costs. Since March 18, 332 of its 400 workers in Wilhelmshaven have been put on shorter hours, a policy the operator says will continue until traffic picks up.

“An expansion of the port would currently not make sense,” said Corinna Romke, a spokeswoman for Eurogate.

“We won’t reach an overall capacity of 2.7 million standard containers overnight,” she said, declining to give a volume forecast for the full year. “Our priority this year is to win a contract from a second shipping company.”

Seago Line manager Langschwager said he expects the harbor to play a supplementary role within the existing port infrastructure in northern Europe in the future.

“Should volumes in the shipping industry grow and other ports like Hamburg or Bremerhaven be swamped with containers, then Wilhelmshaven is a good option,” he said.

Copyright 2013 Bloomberg.

Image: Hapag Lloyd

Talks of a merger between Germany’s largest container shipping companies have been suspended because terms of a deal could not be reached.

Oetker Group, which owns Hamburg Süd, asked for the merger talks that began in December be suspended after the parties were unable to agree on the terms of a merger, Hapag-Lloyd said in a statement on Sunday.

Hamburg Süd on Monday confirmed that the talks have stalled temporarily but said that its Advisory Board and Executive Board hold the view that the merger of Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg Süd would be of enormous benefit for both companies as well as for Hamburg as a shipping location.

Earlier this month, Hapag-Lloyd co-owner Klaus-Michael Kuehne said that if the merger were to happen it would have be a merger of equals.  If no agreement with Oetker could be reached, Kuehne would push for Hapag-Lloyd to go public on its own.

Image: Blohm + Voss Yachts

By Eyk Henning

FRANKFURT–London-based private equity firm Star Capital Partners Ltd. is pursuing a deal that will allow it to turn one of the oldest German marine companies into a firm dedicated solely to building and repairing yachts for the super rich.

The investor is putting Blohm + Voss’s Oil Tools unit, worth more than 100 million euros ($201.8 million), up for sale, and has mandated Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital to help find a buyer, several people familiar with the matter said.

Star Capital was not immediately available for comment.

Selling the unit that makes pipe-handling equipment represents the last step in reinventing the long-standing Hamburg-based company. Founded in 1877, Blohm + Voss grew to become the world’s largest shipyard at the time. During World War I, it built 96 submarines and six battleships, among other craft. It has built ships such as the Bismarck, which was the world’s largest battleship when it sank after an attack by the U.K.’s Royal Navy in 1941.

After World War II, Blohm + Voss increased production of civil ships. In 1990 it delivered a number of expensive boats worth $210 million.

German industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp AG (TKA.XE) bought Blohm + Voss’s shipyards in 2005. Thyssen kept the battleship and submarine operations, and sold the civil activities with its around 1,500 employees and EUR500 million in annual revenue to Star Capital about six years later. People familiar with the matter valued the deal at around EUR150 million at the time.

The change of hands revived Blohm + Voss as a maker of super yachts, after the company hadn’t received a new order since 2008 under Thyssen’s ownership.

The global market for super yachts had sales of EUR2.26 billion from 257 ships last year, down from EUR2.5 billion a year earlier, according to industry media specialist Boat International.

To focus on repairing and building mega yachts, such as the Eclipse, which Blohm + Voss sold to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich for around $800 million in 2010, Star Capital decided to sell two non-related units also acquired from Thyssen.

It recently disposed of the ship component unit Blohm + Voss Industries, which Sweden’s SKF AB bought for EUR80 million. The sale of Blohm + Voss Oil Tools will finalize the revamp. The unit recorded revenues of around EUR100 million in 2012 and roughly EUR20 million in earnings before interest and taxes.

(c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Photo of UK windmills by electropod

Dusseldorf – German consumers are paying millions of euros to link the national power grid to windmills in the North Sea that haven’t yet been built, grid operator TenneT TSO GmbH said.

TenneT, responsible for connecting offshore wind farms in the North Sea to Germany’s grid, said the rules on wind-farm development have forced it to build cables to turbines that haven’t been built. The BorWin1 transformer station only has turbines for about a third of its planned 400-megawatt capacity, said Lex Hartman, a member of the company’s management board.

“The grid operator has to build a connection, but developers are not obliged to build afterwards,” Hartman said in a phone interview. It costs more than 1 billion euros ($1.29 billion) to connect 1,000 megawatts, he said.

“In case of doubt the electricity consumer has to pay for stranded investments,” Hartman said, predicting a “considerable public dispute.”

The overspend on wind-farm grid connections comes at time when German households and businesses are preparing to foot the bill for the replacement of nuclear reactors with renewable energy. The country will spend 20 billion euros next year on renewables, Jochen Homann, head of the Bundesnetzagentur grid regulator, said in an Oct. 9 newspaper report.

Binding Planning

“It’s possible that billions of euros are invested in vain,” Christian Rehtanz, who heads the Institute of Energy Systems, Energy Efficiency and Energy Economics at the Technical University of Dortmund, said by phone. “Grid operators need a more binding planning of the wind-park projects.”

TenneT, whose power lines stretch from Germany’s North Sea coast to the Austrian border south of Munich and serve about 20 million people, has committed to invest about 6 billion euros linking 5,500 megawatts of offshore wind farms in Germany. It’s currently building six high-voltage, direct-current facilities.

Under today’s rules, a wind-farm developer need only commit 10 million euros to a project before the grid operator is obliged to provide a connection large enough to cope with the project’s maximum size.

“It doesn’t work,” Hartman said. “At worst we have either platforms without windmills or windmills without platforms and if we have both we don’t have a grid to transport.”

TenneT will have enough capacity to connect 11,000 megawatts of wind turbines by 2022, while Hartman predicts only 7,000 megawatts will be built.

Germany’s federal government may change the regulation of wind-farm links. A draft bill endorsed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet in August would allow another wind-farm developer to use an existing connection that hasn’t been used. German lawmakers are scheduled to vote in November.

This article was written by Tino Andresen for Bloomberg News.

P+S Werften’s Volkswerft Stralsund site

DFDS (DFDS.KO), the Danish shipping and logistics company, said Thursday it has cancelled contracts with German shipyard P+S Werften GmbH for a pair of new ships ordered in November 2010.

DFDS says that the contracts have been cancelled as the shipyard “breached several terms of the contracts.”

In August, P+S Werften filed for insolvency with the local court of Stralsund, Germany, after talks with creditors, customers and suppliers broke down. Following the announcement, DFDS, with two ro-ro newbuildings on order with P+S Werften, immediately expressed concerns over whether or not the vessels on order will be delivered.

DFDS says that the companies investment commitment for building the ships, of around DKK1.0 billion, will cease and that the payments made to the shipyard are covered by a bank guarantee. DFDS had planned investments of about 450 million Danish kronor, or $79 million, to build the new ships for 2012.

P+S Werften’s Volkswerft Stralsund site

German shipbuilder P+S Werften GmbH on Wednesday said it has filed for insolvency with the local court of Stralsund, Germany, after talks with creditors, customers and suppliers broke down.

“In recent days we have explored all options in our attempts to reach a solution,” said Rüdiger Fuchs, who has been CEO of P+S WERFTEN since August, 7 2012. “We have provided open and honest information about our problems and tried to prevent insolvency. Now it is clear that it is not possible to reach an out-of-court solution supported by all stakeholder groups.”

In a statement P+S Werften says it is seeking debtor’s self-administration in a bid to keep the available know-how in the company and to continue to build as many ships as possible.

The company owns two sites in Stralsund and Wolgast, in northern Germany, and employs 1,771 people and 116 trainees. P+S Werften said it hopes that the sale of its Peene shipyard in Wolgast will be conducted within a structured investor process.

Danish shipping and logistics company DFDS A/S (DFDS.KO), who has two ro-ro newbuildings on order with P+S Werften, has already expressed concerns over whether or not the vessels on order will be delivered.

Dominic Chopping from Dow Jones contributed to this article.

The Nils Holgersson with her bow tightly embedded in the starboard side of the Urd.

The captain of German ferry Nils Holgersson could be facing serious charges after local coast guard officials have ruled out that any technical malfunction caused his ferry to ram another passenger ferry in Luebeck, Germany last week.

Damage to the passenger ferry "Urd".

Authorities investigating the May 3 collision at the German Port of Travemünde are now pointing to human error on behalf of captain of the Nils Holgersson as the cause of the collision, saying he failed to set the proper thruster positioning when approaching the dock.

The passenger ferry on the receiving end of the collision, named the Urd, suffered severe damages but managed to escape without any injuries to its passengers or crew after getting t-boned by the Nils Holgersson. The Urd was moored at Pier 3 of the Scandinavian Quay in Travemünde when she was struck, puncturing two large holes on her starboard side both below the waterline and to her upper decks.

“The ship collided with the ferry, which was in port, almost at a right angle,” coast guard spokesman Karsten Dose told the Lübecker Nachrichten newspaper.

A number of vessel rushed in to assist the vessels and pump water from the Urd.

The Nils Holgersson suffered damage to her bulbous bow and bow. She is operated by TT-Line, a shipping company based in Lübeck, Germany providing direct ferry and freight service between Germany and Sweden.  Local reports have indicated that alcohol has likely been ruled out as a contributing factor. The captain could be facing charges of endangering shipping.

Winter in the Port of Hamburg, © HHM / Dietmar Hasenpusch

The Port of Hamburg regains market shares and foresees a positive annual balance on total seaborne cargo throughput…

In 2011, Germany’s largest universal port achieved a seaborne cargo throughput totalling 132.2 million tons that represents an increase of 9.1 percent. Container throughput in 2011 totalled 9 million 20-feet standard containers (TEU), or 1.12 million TEU more than in 2010. Of all ports in the North European Range, in 2011 Hamburg therefore achieved the fastest absolute growth in container throughput.

After a successful year in 2011, the Port of Hamburg with throughput 14.2 percent up at altogether 9 million TEU is again Europe’s second largest container port, ahead of Antwerp. The Port of Hamburg’s total throughput was 9.1 percent higher, reaching a volume of 132 million tons that crossed its quays in the past twelve months. In other words, 11 million tons more were handled compared to 2010.

Claudia Roller, CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing (HHM), presented the 2011 handling figures at the Port of Hamburg’s annual press conference today:

“We are delighted that in 2011 the Port of Hamburg proved able to achieve above-average growth both in total throughput and in container traffic. With the strongest absolute growth in container throughput, Hamburg regained market shares of approximately 1.3 percentage points as against its competing ports.”

The positive trend in 2011 prompted Claudia Roller to forecast growth once again for next year:

“For 2012 we are also reckoning with an increase in throughput figures, although this will slow down compared to 2011, meaning that by year-end we should have achieved a moderate increase on seaborne cargoes. With its existing capacities, well developed infrastructure and highly efficient port service providers, some of whom have recently won international awards, Hamburg is very well equipped to handle growing cargo volumes with its customary reliability, speed and high quality. The forthcoming deepening of the navigation channel on the Lower and Outer Elbe will further boost Hamburg’s attractiveness in competition with North Range ports as a European hub for ultra-large vessels. Nevertheless, as yet not fully implemented changes in major liner services make it difficult to calculate the trend in container throughput at this stage.”

Following 6.9 percent growth in world trade in 2011, for 2012 the IMF (International Monetary Fund) anticipates a renewed slowdown in such growth to 3.8 percent. The IMF assessment of the prospects for world growth also takes into account that in 2012 the repercussions of the debt crisis will cause countries of the Eurozone to slip into a slight recession in the area of the real economy.

An overview of the Port of Hamburg’s gratifying year in 2011

The Port of Hamburg can look back on thoroughly satisfactory results for the year on both imports and exports. On the imports side Port of Hamburg Marketing (HHM), the Port of Hamburg‘s marketing organisation, reports throughput of 76.2 million tons (+ 8.2 percent). Exports via Hamburg at 56 million tons reflected growth of no less than 10.3 percent on the same period of the previous year.

At 92.6 million tons, the general cargo throughput predominant in Hamburg achieved 14.4 percent growth. In 2011 the Port of Hamburg‘s container throughput totalled 90.1 million tons (+ 15 percent). At 4.6 million TEU, the Port of Hamburg achieved 13.8 percent growth on imports, while exports at 4.4 million TEU were up by 14.5 percent. The trade routes mainly responsible for growth in container throughput were the Baltic region and East Asia, as well as North and South America. These alone accounted for around 82 percent of the growth in box throughput. In container traffic, in 2011 Asia once again retained top position among the Port of Hamburg’s trade routes. Last year altogether 5.2 million TEU were handled from and for Asia, or around 419,000 TEU (+ 8.8 percent) more than in the previous year. Yet the largest rise in container throughput reported for the Port of Hamburg in 2011 was with the USA. With 81.6 percent growth, the USA advanced from twelfth to sixth place among the Port of Hamburg’s foreign trade partners. On container throughput in the Port of Hamburg, growth was also achieved in 2011 by the other trades, namely America (+ 28 percent), Africa (+ 5.3 percent) and Australia/Pacific (+ 0.1 percent).

Container throughput in the Baltic trade developed equally satisfactorily. Gaining around 27 percent, in 2011 transhipment traffic by feeder grew at an above-average rate. Russia reported enormous, 35.7 percent growth in container throughput via Hamburg and with 596,000 TEU is meanwhile the Port of Hamburg’s second most important trading partner in container traffic. With altogether 238,000 TEU, in 2011 feeder services with Polish portsreported above-average growth of 33.3 percent. Altogether around 3.3 million TEU were handled in transhipment traffic in Hamburg last year. With more than 150 sailings per week, Hamburg remains the most important feeder port in Northern Europe for the whole of the Baltic region. For both Hamburg and Germany’s North Sea ports, the Kiel Canal cuts the distance to be covered and voyage times for traffic with the Baltic. That represents an important locational advantage in competition with ports situated further West.

Port of Hamburg throughput statistics on conventional cargoes, which also cover RoRo cargoes, have been down at 2.5 million tons (- 3.8 percent) in 2011. The decisive factor for the downturn in this segment of throughput was the drop in imports of conventionally stowed citrus fruits, which were 17.8 percent lower at 497,000 tons. The rise in imports of conventionally loaded metals was gratifying, since at 185,000 tons these were handsomely ahead by almost 26 percent. Also very satisfactory were vehicle imports, handled as RoRo cargoes in Hamburg, which at 96,000 tons grew by 12.3 percent. At 133,000 tons (- 4 percent), imports of paper as a conventional cargo were only slightly below the previous year’s level. On the export side, at 1.4 million tons throughput of conventional general cargo was up by 2.5 percent. The main goods exported were heavy cargoes and plant at 543,000 tons (- 8 percent), vehicles with 517,000 tons (+ 9.5 percent) and iron and steel with 281,000 tons (+ 17.1 percent), all handled at the Port of Hamburg’s specialized terminals.

Accounting for around 30 percent of the port’s total throughput, in 2011 bulk cargo throughput in Hamburg at altogether 39.6 million tons remained slightly (- 1.6 percent) below the previous year’s volume. The main categories of bulk cargoes are grab, suction and liquid cargoes, all of which are handled and stored in the universal port of Hamburg. Throughput of grab cargoes at over 19 million tons accounted for 49 percent of total bulk cargo throughput in 2011 and was therefore the dominant category. Grab cargo throughput consists primarily of ores and coal, along with fertilizers and scrap metal. Despite an 8.8 percent downturn, at 8,5 million tons ore imports top the throughput statistics for this segment in Hamburg. Coal imports at around 6 million tons were up by 12.6 percent. On the export side, throughput of fertilizers at 2.3 million tons grew by 2.7 percent. Throughput of scrap exports at 943,000 tons was around 7 percent lower than in the previous year. Following two very strong years, in 2011 throughput of suction cargoes at  6.2 million tons remained 6 percent below the previous year’s level. Despite a very steep increase of 21 percent in imports of oleaginous fruits that reached 3 million tons last year, it proved impossible to stem the decline in exports of suction cargoes (- 24.4 percent). In 2011 a poor grain harvest and its lack of suitability for the world grain market were behind the almost 36 percent drop in grain exports to 1.5 million tons. Throughput of liquid cargoes at altogether 14 million tons in 2011 remained only slightly (- 1.1 percent) below the previous year’s figure. Caused among other factors by lower refinery production here, crude oil imports at 4.1 million tons were 6.2 percent lower. At 4.8 million tons, those of oil products were up by 2.1 percent. On the export side, at 3.8 million tons (+ 0.3 percent) throughput of liquid cargoes was slightly ahead. Exports of biodiesel at 1.3 million tons produced 4.2 percent growth.

Calls by ultra-large ships at the Port of Hamburg further increasing

“Following extensive investments in port and infrastructural expansion, as well as state-of-the-art IT systems, today Hamburg is already well equipped for handling growing volumes of seaborne cargoes. We are consequently staying on target for a modern port of the future”, said Jens Meier, CEO of the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA).

Against the background of the 894 ultra-large vessels handled in Hamburg during 2011, the planned deepening of the Lower and Outer Elbe is from the viewpoint of business in the port and its international customers something that must be implemented at all costs. With its dense network of more than one hundred worldwide liner services and its outstanding transport links, the Port of Hamburg performs an essential function in worldwide foreign trade for the German economy and the business abroad done by its European neighbours. On average, over 100 liner services were operating regularly out of Hamburg in 2011. A high proportion of seaports worldwide were served directly, and the remainder indirectly via transhipment.

The East Asia trades constitute one of the Port of Hamburg’s main markets. In 2011 Hamburg was on average receiving 26 weekly calls by fully cellular services on the East Asia trade route. In addition, there were nine liner services to North America, as well as eleven to South America and 20 to Africa. Almost 50 feeder links serve the North Sea and Baltic regions. In 2011 the Port of Hamburg reported altogether 17 new liner services. Four of these were on the East Asia trade route, three to North America, two to West Africa and one each to South America and the Indian sub-continent. An additional six commenced operating on the Baltic trade route.

Various liner shipping companies have announced new joint services and cooperation deals for 2012. For instance, CMA CGM and MSC will be operating joint liner services and so will CHKY – The Green Alliance and Evergreen Line. The Grand Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd, NYK, OOCL) and New World Alliance (APL, MOL, HMM) shipping alliances have also put their cooperation on a new footing with the G6 Alliance. As the first changes to liner services and the plans for new ones indicate, in the current year the Port of Hamburg will retain its role as both a traffic interface for worldwide cargo flows and a European hub.

Yesterday, 1 December, the “Berlin” left the shipbuilding hangar for the first time in what is known as the roll-out. This was followed today by the launch, the ship’s first contact with the water. “These new vessels are our biggest and most important project for the future and reflect the growing role of the eastern corridor for passenger and sea-freight traffic”, said Bengt Pihl, CEO of Scandlines. Axel Schulz, Sales Director of P + S Werften GmbH emphasised: “We are proud that this newbuild project is being realised at P + S shipyards. It is a demonstration of our capabilities and the result of systematically realigning our activities towards specialised shipbuilding. These vessels also send a vital signal for the competitiveness of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania as a business location.”

The shipping company Scandlines is investing a total of €230 million on new ships and on extending the ports in Rostock and Gedser. The two new superferries offer significantly more space for passengers and vehicles. They can carry either 460 cars or 90 lorries as well as up to 1,500 passengers, more than doubling previous capacities on the Rostock-Gedser route. Fuel consumption and emissions will be reduced to a minimum – for the benefit of both economic efficiency and the environment. The interior design of the new ships comes courtesy of French architects AIA. The ferries’ catering concept includes a buffet restaurant, à la carte restaurant, cafeteria and a self-service restaurant/café, as well as snack and drinks vending machines. In addition, customers can also make use of a shopping and gaming area on board and even fully equipped conference rooms.

Source: Scandlines

The order calls for one ship to be delivered in the Fall of 2014 with an option for a second ship for Spring 2015.  The 158,000 Gross Registered Tons (GRT) new build will carry just over 4,100 guests based on double occupancy.  The estimated all-in cost per berth is about 170,000.  This all-in cost includes the yard s base contract price plus everything needed to design, operate and build the vessel, from architect fees to supervision costs and all loose inventories from computers to art and bed linens.

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