Bolidt Provides an Alternative to Hardwood on Board Cruise Ships

Norwegian Sun, image via Bolidt

As the cruise shipping industry continues to make huge investments in new ships, owners are also allocating significant resources to bring new life to their existing fleets.  One of the highest areas of wear and tear is the decking found on these ships.

Rather than chop an entire tropical rainforest down to harvest exotic hardwood, there are fortunately other options.

Bolidt, a Dutch marine decking and flooring supplier, reports that it is currently experiencing high levels of demand for its synthetic decking and flooring products as a result of investments by cruise ship owners.

Last year Bolidt completed an extensive project for Madrid-based cruise line Pullmantur during a major refit in Spain on their 268-meter long ship Sovereign. This involved upgrading decking areas in different parts of the vessel during a 12-day drydocking at Navantia’s Cadiz shipyard. Moreover Bolidt has received further contracts for cruise ship refits from Carnival, Holland America Line, Princess and RCI, among others.

One of Bolidt’s biggest current cruise ship refurbishment projects however is for NCL. The company will play an important part in the upgrade of a series of four of the cruise operator’s vessels. Modernization of the first of these, the 294 meter Norwegian Jewel was completed in 2014, while sisterships Norwegian Gem, Norwegian Pearl and Norwegian Star will be upgraded during 2015.

Bolidt says the decking upgrades on the NCL ships are amongst the largest undertakings of this type they have been involved with to date, although the scope of supply varies from vessel to vessel. For Norwegian Jewel, which was redelivered in autumn 2014, Bolidt supplied 4,240 square meters of their synthetic teak flooring.  This year, NCL’s Norwegian Gem will receive approximately 4,000 square meters of Bolidt’s specialized flooring for the ship’s sun deck, jogging track, sports deck and pool deck areas.

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