---

On 1st July, former Finnish president Tarja Halonen christened Tallink Grupp's new environmentally sound liquefied natural gas (LNG)-driven fast ferry 'Megastar' at Meyer Turku's shipyard.

The Megastar is the first LNG-driven vessel construction for Tallink. While the ship will be able to run on marine distillate fuel, its main fuel is intended to be LNG. With the use of LNG as fuel, environmental performance will greatly improve, dropping sulphur and soot emissions to nil while at the same time greatly reducing both Nitrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

"We are very honoured for having President Halonen as the Godmother, as this is a high acknowledgement to the ship's exceptionally developed environmental indicators. Megastar will be a good messenger from that perspective to the whole industry," said Mr. Janek Stalmeister, CEO of AS Tallink Grupp.

While full delivery of the Megastar is anticipated in the early part of 2017, physical building of the vessel began back in the summer of 2015, and its keel was laid on February 9th of 2016. A float-out is planned for July with sea-trials to follow in the last months of the year.

"We are very happy that today our latest LNG ferry is taking shape and, after one-and-a-half years of design and production work, starts to look like a ship," said Jan Meyer, CEO of Meyer Turku.

When completed, the Megastar will be a 49,000-gross-ton (GT) ship with a service speed of 27 knots; it will measure 212 meters in length and accommodate up to 2800 passengers, matching the largest cruise ferry of the company - the Baltic Queen - in both length and capacity.

Designed to exclusively service the route across the Gulf of Finland between Tallinn, Estonia's capital city on the Baltic Sea, and Helsinki, Finland's southern capital, the Megastar is being built to comply with all current and future emission regulations for the Emission Control Areas (ECAs).