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Finland's Deltamarin Ltd has signed contracts with China's Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd (XSI) for engineering and construction support services for Viking Line's newbuild LNG-fuelled ro-pax vessel.

The contracts cover basic and detail design as well as comprehensive project management support and supervision services to the shipyard during vessel construction.

Deltamarin has developed the new vessel concept together with Viking Line, and delivered assistance in the tender and contract phases for the owner.

Deltamarin's sales manager, Nina Savijoki, remarked: "We are very happy about the constructive cooperation with Viking Line. From a naval architectural point of view, they presented us with every concept developer's dream challenge: to come up with a concept that is even more energy efficient in relation to cargo capacity than their MS Viking Grace, one of the most energy-efficient and sophisticated ferries on the market.

"We have received good support from Deltamarin during the concept development and the worldwide yard selection phase, and look forward to continuing the work together with them and Xiamen Shipyard during the vessel construction," said Kari Granberg, NB manager at Viking Line.

Special focus in the concept development was put on hull form development, weight control, energy efficiency (including waste heat recovery) and improvement of the general arrangement. According to Deltamarin, it has succeeded in making the new concept 10 percent more energy efficient than Viking Grace.

Now that the Viking Line ship contract with XSI has been confirmed, Deltamarin says it will continue with the basic and detail design of all disciplines for the yard. Deltamarin is to also support the yard in project management as well as passenger vessel building process requirements and provide supervision services during the production of the newbuilding project.

The value of Deltamarin's contracts with XSI is more than EUR 11 million in total.

The engineering and pre-construction project management support is to be performed mainly at Deltamarin's offices in Finland over an estimated period of 12 months, whilst supervision and other construction support services will be carried out until planned delivery of the vessel in 2020.

Once completed, the vessel is slated to serve the Finland to Sweden route, connecting Turku, Aland Islands, and Stockholm as part of the European Union's Motorways of the Seas project.

The new ro-pax vessel for Viking Line will have a passenger capacity of 2,800 people, and the length of its cargo lanes will be 1,500 metres.

In addition to running on LNG, the vessel will also have two 24-metre-high, bunker-saving rotor sails installed. It is set to be the second Viking Line vessel to be fitted with rotor sails.

As previously reported by Bunker Index in January, another Finnish firm, Norsepower Oy Ltd, is due to install its rotor sail technology on board the LNG-fuelled Viking Grace during the second quarter of 2018. The ferry is set to be retrofitted with one medium-sized Norsepower Rotor Sail unit that is 24 metres in height and 4 metres in diameter, making it the first-ever global LNG/wind electric propulsion hybrid ship.

In 2016, Viking Line managed to decrease its bunker expenses by EUR 9.2 million, or 18.9 percent, to EUR 39.5 million, down from EUR 48.7 million the previous year.

The ferry operator explained earlier this year that the fall was the result of lower average bunker prices combined with "the Group's continued efforts to optimize the bunker consumption of its vessels".