On January 7, China’s Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS), a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corp. (CSSC) has officially announced that it has set up a specialized team for the design of large cruise ships.
Specialized Ship Design team
SWS is building the first two cruise ships to be constructed in China to operate for the new Chinese brand CSSC Carnival Cruise Shipping Ltd. and the first 133,500gt vessel is due for delivery in 2023.
Zhou Qi, project manager of the cruise department said, “To cope with the massive project of building cruise ships, we have created a team for cruise ship design and each section of the team will work closely and pay high attention to the overall process”.
Fincantieri connection
Chen Gang, general manager of SWS emphasized that the structure of the cruise ship design team has been agreed after lots of research and communications and believe it is the most reasonable arrangement in the present situation. They are introducing technology and knowledge from Fincantieri and developing our own cruise shipbuilding technology and the main target is to complete the cruise ship design and coordinate with other departments including production, purchasing, shipbuilding etc to jointly promote cruise ship project.
2 + 4 option order
The deal between Carnival and CSSC —which has options for four additional vessels—was signed in November 2018 in the presence of the Undersecretary of State for the Italian Ministry of Economic Development Michele Geraci. The China cruise market is forecast to grow to 4.5m cruise passengers by 2020.
Seatrade Cruise Asia Pacific 2019 will take place in Baoshan, Shanghai in the last quarter of this year and the dates are yet to be confirmed.
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Source: Seatrade-cruise
