The first Carnival China Cruise Shipping newbuild was floated out last week at Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC).
“We at Carnival are committed to supporting to CSSC and our joint venture CSSC Carnival which is the foundation of Carnival’s China strategy,” said Arnold Donald, CEO of Carnival Corporation, in a video address celebrating the float out of hull 1508.
“We are committed to building CSSC Carnival into a successful and fully functioning Chinese-flagged cruise company,” Donald continued.
The ship is one of two on order for Carnival’s joint venture brand with CSSC, where Carnival is a minority partner. The brand will serve the domestic Chinese market and has already taken ownership of Costa Atlantica and Costa Mediterranea.
The new ship touched water for the first time in Shanghai, and will now move to an interior fit-out stage before her delivery in 2023. A sister ship will follow in 2024; there is an option for four additional ships on the contract.
The new builds are on the Carnival Vista-class platform, with CSSC working in partnership with Fincantieri.
During a media briefing Thursday aboard the soon-to-be-christened MSC Seashore, Ruben Rodriguez, MSC Cruises North America president, revealed the line’s next EVO-class ship will now be officially deployed to the U.S. upon completion in 2022.
“MSC Seascape is the sister ship to MSC Seashore. It’s currently under construction in Italy, to be launched at the end of next year,” revealed Rodriguez. “And we will be deploying Seascape in Miami as its homeport come winter 2022-2023.” He added that the ship will bring “new experiences, new amenities and new features”.
MSC Seascape is scheduled to be delivered from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri in November 2022. The 5,877-passenger ship will offer 11 dining venues, 19 bars and lounges, and will feature six swimming pools. Rodriguez’s announcement coincided with the float-out of MSC Seascape at Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri on Thursday.
MSC’s decision to deploy its newest vessel Stateside isn’t exactly a surprise. The Swiss-based, Italy-owned cruise line has been making big investments in the U.S. to stake a place in the highly competitive U.S. cruise market. These initiatives also include its three-year Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve project, which saw the line completely renovating and restoring an industrial island in the Bahamas into a thriving marine reserve with over 75,000 individually-planted plants, over 80 different species of marine life, and a coral restoration project.
MSC Cruises will also begin ground-breaking on their own dedicated terminal at PortMiami, designed by Miami-based Arquitectonica, the global architecture firm responsible for several buildings found in the Miami skyline as well as across the world.
169,400-gt MSC Seascape will be able to accommodate up to 5,877 guests with 13,000 m2 of outdoor space (source: Fincantieri)MSC Seascape will be delivered in November 2022 from Fincantieri, the second Seaside EVO-class ship to enter the MSC Cruises fleet, and the fourth vessel in the line’s Seaside class MSC Cruises executive chairman Pierfrancesco Vago said, “The float out of MSC Seascape marks yet another significant milestone in the growth of our fleet and the vessel will pay homage to the oceans through yet another host of highly innovative maritime and design features.“We have continued with our ambitious new build plans in spite of the pandemic, and today is a double celebration for MSC as our next flagship MSC Seascape is floated out into water simultaneously as its sister ship MSC Seashore is officially named at our private island, Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve.
“MSC Seascape – together with MSC Seashore – features some of the latest environmental technologies and solutions to minimise its impact on the environment which will help us take a further step forward towards realising our ambition of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”.Fincantieri chief executive Giuseppe Bono said, “Such an imposing ship makes it even more suggestive to reflect on the enormous work behind its construction. We began the work on MSC Seascape almost concurrently with the onset of the emergency and today, together with an established operator like MSC, we celebrate its float-out in line with pre-pandemic plans. The great determination in respecting production commitments and preserving the entire orderbook has become the hallmark of our Group, an authentic cornerstone of the culture of the company, and there could not be a better precondition for looking to the future with renewed confidence”.169,400-gt MSC Seascape will be able to accommodate up to 5,877 guests with 13,000 m2 of outdoor space.MSC Seascape’s environmental technologies will include selective catalytic reduction systems on each of its four Wärtsilä 14V 46F engines to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 90% by converting the gas into harmless nitrogen and water, plus hybrid exhaust gas cleaning systems to remove 98% of sulphur oxide from ship emissions.
Fincantieri added in a statement that the vessel is fitted with best-in-class wastewater treatment systems with purification standards that are higher than most wastewater treatment facilities on land, advanced waste management systems, ballast water treatment systems approved by the US Coast Guard, the latest-technology systems for the prevention of oil discharges from machinery spaces and various effective energy-efficiency improvements – from heat recovery systems to LED lighting able to save energy. The ship will also feature an underwater radiated noise management system to reduce and isolate the potential effects on marine mammals.
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