Newbuilding rumours from Hamburg

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Published on Saturday, 11 September 2010 14:55

Written by Teijo Niemelä

By Henrik Segercrantz

The SMM tradeshow, held last week in Hamburg, is a great place to gather bits and pieces of market rumours. Although unconfirmed, as rumours are before they eventually end up as a press release, they are almost treated as facts by the end of the exhibition week, when you have heard them so many times. But, these are unconfirmed rumours of upcoming cruise ship orders.

Hapag Lloyd is to place their 30,000 gross ton newbuilding order in France, which is a very interesting piece of news from the last days of the tradeshow.

Already during the first days, everyone "knew" that a letter of intent has been signed, for NCL's next vessels, with Meyer Werft. The previous vessel, Norwegian Epic, was recently delivered from France. Interesting but partly predictable.

That leaves one joker about which no definite rumours were expressed, at least loudly – Royal Caribbean International's next series of vessels. One could argue that these are bound for Finland, but RCI keeps the competition going on for these, between STX in Finland and Meyer Werft in Germany. Allure of the Seas, the last vessel at the Turku Yard in Finland is to be delivered on October 28. Maybe around that time some of these rumours turn into orders. Until then we can just speculate.

A fact is though, that Viking Line wants a lower price for their newbuildings, than those offered by the yards which have participated in the tendering, so far.

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