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Construction work has commenced to build Costa Cruises's first LNG-powered vessel after a steel-cutting ceremony was held at the Meyer shipyard in Turku, Finland, on Wednesday.

The vessel, which is to be named the Costa Smeralda, will have a gross tonnage (grt) in excess of 180,000 tonnes and is scheduled to enter into service in October 2019, operating in the Western Mediterranean.

LNG bunkering to the ship is to be provided by Shell Western LNG B.V. (Shell), as announced last year.

Meanwhile, a second vessel, sister to Costa Smeralda, is slated for delivery in 2021.

The two new Costa Cruises ships will be powered by LNG both in port and on the open sea. LNG is to be stored in special tanks on board and used to generate 100 percent of the energy required for navigation and onboard services, thanks to dual-fuel hybrid engines.

Carnival construction programme

Construction of the Costa Smeralda and its sister ship forms part of a strategic plan by parent company Carnival Corporation to build seven cruise vessels that will be fully powered by LNG.

Carnival announced the order of four LNG-powered ships from Meyer Werft in the summer of 2015, two of which are the aforementioned Costa Cruises vessels, with the other two ships scheduled to join the AIDA Cruises fleet in the autumn of 2018 and the spring of 2021 respectively.

Carnival celebrated the keel-laying of the first of the two AIDA ships, the AIDAnova, in a ceremony last week to mark the official start of construction of the fully LNG-fuelled cruise ships.

A deal to build another three vessels - two for Carnival Cruise Line (scheduled for delivery in 2020 and 2022) and one for P&O Cruises UK (due to be delivered in 2020) - was announced in September 2016, and brings Carnival's total number of orders for vessels fully powered by LNG to seven.

Neil Palomba, president of Costa Cruises, said: "The two new Costa Cruises ships are a true global innovation and set new standards for the entire sector. They will be among the first cruise ships powered by LNG, spurring the development of this green technology, especially in the Mediterranean area, and they will be the world's first LNG-powered ships that will be marketed to consumers from multiple countries, including Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland."

Image: Steel-cutting ceremony of Costa Cruises' first LNG-fuelled ship, the Costa Smeralda, held on September 13, 2017.