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Viking Line Abp has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with China's Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry Co. Ltd for the construction of an LNG-powered passenger vessel to be delivered in the spring of 2020.

The letter of intent also includes an option for an additional vessel. The final agreement is set to be signed in the spring of 2017.

The vessel is intended to be a collaborative project, and the plan is to engage a number of Finnish and other European suppliers, including Deltamarin, Wartsila and ABB Marine.

The new ship is due to operate along the Turku (Finland)-Aland Islands (Finland)-Stockholm (Sweden) route. It will be 218 metres in length and have a gross registered tonnage of 63,000 tonnes. Passenger capacity will be 2,800 people, and the length of its cargo lanes will be 1,500 metres, Viking Line says.

"Our intention is for the vessel to run on liquefied natural gas. We have excellent experience with this from the M/S Viking Grace, the first large LNG-powered passenger vessel in the world. Great emphasis has been placed in the planning work on environmentally sound solutions, including new innovative energy-efficient applications. Many years of planning work have gone into this newbuilding project in conjunction with the European Union's Motorways of the Seas project under the scope of the Connecting Europe Facility funding instrument, which has also included the Port of Turku and the Ports of Stockholm," commented Jan Hanses, Viking Line's CEO.

In August, Bunker Index reported that the Viking Grace reached a refuelling landmark by being bunkered for the thousandth time. Operated by Swedish company AGA Gas AB, the M/S Seagas - which was specially built for ship-to-ship refuelling - is the vessel that has been carrying out LNG fuel deliveries to the Viking Grace. The Seagas supplies the Viking Grace with about 60 tonnes of LNG while the vessel is docked at Stadsgarden in central Stockholm.

Image: Viking Line vessel - early renderings, concept 1.