Recently completing her maiden voyage from Southampton to Barcelona was Celebrity Beyond, the third in a series of five new Edge Class cruise ships built for Celebrity Cruises, a division of the Royal Caribbean Group. She is now home ported in Barcelona for the 2022 summer season before repositioning to Fort Lauderdale for the winter.

Sweden’s Stena Line is well known for operating a large and diverse fleet of ferries and tankers. Innovation in design and state of the art facilities are a hallmark of the company’s approach to European market leadership.

Delivered in late 2020, Stena Embla is the third so called E-Flexer ferry to join the company’s Irish Sea fleet and operates on the highly competitive Liverpool – Belfast route. The investment represents a multi-year $536 million development program

Completed in China in 2021, the VLOC Sea Zhoushan is fitted with tilting Rotor Sails supplied by Finland based Norsepower. She is the largest vessel to date to be fitted with Rotor Sails and the first bulk carrier of any size. The five Rotor Sails are 24m high x 4m diameter.

Marshal Vasilevskiy is Russia’s only Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FRSU), a prime example of these complex vessels which have the attractive option of providing in port terminal LNG capacity or trading on the open market. She was originally built to serve Kalingrad.

 

Container vessel appearance is about to enter a new phase with the announcement by Maersk Line of the design for a series of eight carbon-neutral methanol-powered 16,000 TEU capacity container ships ordered with Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI). The first vessel in the series is scheduled for delivery in Q1 of 2024. A contractual option for four additional vessels was also exercised earlier this month.

Believed to be the world’s first dual fueled diesel/LNG Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), Yuan Rui Yang is setting a trend which others seem certain to follow as pressure mounts on ship owners to reduce GHG emissions.

With her sea trials complete, in late October the UK's new Polar Research ship, RRS Sir David Attenborough, paid a visit to the port of London ahead of her first deployment to the Antarctic this month. She tied up in Greenwich at the home of the Prime Meridian (Zero Longitude) to mark the beginning of the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow. Named after renowned UK broadcaster, naturalist, and environmental campaigner Sir David Attenborough, she is pictured above in the River Thames while on passage to Greenwich.

In May this year, Viking Ocean Cruises named the company’s latest new build Viking Venus in a ceremony conducted at sea in the English Channel. British journalist Anne Diamond was invited to be the ship’s ceremonial godmother and in keeping with the company’s custom, a bottle of Norwegian aquavit was duly cracked on the ship’s hull using a historic Viking broad axe to cut the ribbon to a soundtrack of recorded classical concerts.

BP Shipping’s R Class Aframax sized tankers were introduced to the fleet in the period 2016-17 and represent a significant investment by the company in a total of 9 sister vessels serving this key sector.

The Royal New Zealand Navy has recently taken delivery of HMNZS Aotearoa, a fleet support and replenishment tanker. In addition to providing global support to NZ and allied warships, Aotearoa is built to Polar Class 6 and has a fully winterized design to enable operations in the Antarctic in support of New Zealand’s scientific research stations. Her versatile design enables the transfer at sea of ammunition and dry stores in addition to fuel and water. Also carrying a RNZAF NH90 helicopter, she is the largest vessel to have been commissioned into New Zealand’s navy.

Paris-based Nexans S.A. has recently taken delivery of the Nexans Aurora, a DP3 classed cable laying vessel also outfitted for bundle laying, cable jointing, repair, cable system protection and trenching.

While much of the attention towards adoption of LNG propulsion is focused on the container, cruise  and ro-ro sectors, the dry bulk and tanker industries are also slowly getting in on the act. Delivered in late 2020, sister ships HL Eco and HL Green are the world’s first dual-fueled Capesize bulk carriers.