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Norwegian Cruise Line’s Expansion Accelerates
Two more Freestyle Cruising Ships – largest ever built –
for delivery in 2005 and 2006
Miami, September 19, 2003 -- Star Cruises announced today that it has finalized orders earlier this week for two new Freestyle Cruising ships for its Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) brand for delivery in Fall 2005 and Spring 2006, continuing an expansion and renewal program that has seen a new ship added every year since Star Cruises acquired the long-established brand.
The two ships will be built at Meyer Werft in Germany, continuing a relationship that has seen the building by that 200 year-old family-owned yard of four ships for the Star/NCL group: Superstar Leo, Superstar Virgo, Norwegian Star and Norwegian Dawn.
“Star Cruises is committed to the North American market and to completely renewing the NCL fleet by adding at least one new ship a year,†said Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, Chairman and CEO of Star Cruises Group. “In just three and a half short years, we have committed almost $2.5 billion to new ships for NCL with half of that investment already being in service and the other half under construction. With the introduction of these latest two ships in 2005 and 2006, we will have increased NCL’s capacity by nearly 13,500 berths since 2000, all on new, state-of-the-art ships.â€Â
The two vessels, known currently as hull S.667 and S.668, will be based in large part on the highly successful Norwegian Dawn/Norwegian Star design, with modifications in both technical and passenger areas. Both ships will be capable of the same high 24-25 knot speeds as their recent sister ships. Gross tonnage will be slightly higher than Norwegian Dawn at an estimated 93,000 GRT and the passenger capacity of each will be 2,400 lower berths.
The first contract is in dollars and the second in Euro. The two ships together will cost approximately Euro 703 million or $790 million at today’s exchange rates, including allowances for owner-supplied items.
“Freestyle Cruising and our break with traditional cruise ship design have clearly changed the face of cruising," said Colin Veitch, President and CEO of NCL, “and at an estimated all-in cost of less than $170,000 per berth these additional 4,800 berths will be a huge boost to the financial success we are already having with our new Freestyle Cruising ships. These ships will be the largest we have ever built, and will enable us to continue the expansion of our popular Homeland Cruising deployment around the coast of North America.“
Already we are selling regularly scheduled cruises out of 14 North American home ports and our ambition is to bring a modern cruise ship to every major coastal population center in North America,†Veitch continued.
The new design will continue many of the features that have proven so popular and successful on Norwegian Dawn and Norwegian Star, with 10 different restaurants including a steak house, an Asian restaurant/sushi bar/teppanyaki room (now with two tables versus the current one), Italian, French, and Spanish restaurants, two main dining rooms, and a coffee shop/casual eatery located in the center of the atrium; enormous health, fitness, and spa facilities; generous children and teen areas with a dedicated children’s outdoor pool area; a 1000+ seat opera-style theatre; a high-energy top-of-the-ship nightclub; karaoke facilities and private karaoke rooms; a state of the art casino with player tracking and the highest table limits at sea; a department store-style shopping area, and extensive meeting and conference facilities.
Modifications from Norwegian Dawn include several new public areas on which details will be released closer to delivery.
The new ships will also feature the very latest in environmental and safety management systems, including advanced wastewater treatment plants for the treatment of all gray and black water streams, sterilizing and drying plants for various solid wastes, additional incineration units and additional water making capacity; water-emulsion injection systems for reduction of NOX emissions from the diesel engines, and shore side discharge pumping systems for closed-system waste disposal to licensed shore side facilities. Each ship will have a CCTV surveillance system with over 1000 cameras monitoring all areas of the ship to assist the officers and crew in their safe and efficient management of operations.
Construction will commence on the first ship at the end of this month and Meyer Werft, one of the most advanced shipbuilding yards in the world, expects to deliver the first vessel in a record 22 months from contract signing.
Commenting on the order, Bernard Meyer, CEO of Meyer Werft, said: “We are extremely pleased to have reached this agreement with NCL and are proud that our previous two ships for Star/NCL have had such a revolutionary impact on the US market that our customer has come back to us for more ships.â€Â
“We have been refining the design and negotiating the contracts on these ships continuously since the delivery of Norwegian Dawn last year," Veitch said. "The new design is truly an advance on what we have already done with Meyer Werft, and reflects the excellent working relationship we have with this yard where creativity and mold-breaking ideas can be turned into attractive and commercially realistic ship designs.â€Â
Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line is an industry innovator. NCL recently announced its new brand, NCL America, under which its US flagged ships will operate. The company is currently building its first US Flagged ship, Pride of America, which begins inter-island Hawaii cruises on July 4, 2004.
Together, with Pride of America next year, and Norwegian Crown transferred this month after undergoing extensive refurbishment, the two new orders bring to 7,950 the number of new berths scheduled to join the NCL fleet between now and 2006, a 50 percent increase over today’s capacity.
NCL is also the leader in roundtrip seven-day cruising from U.S. and Canadian ports, offering its popular Homeland Cruising program seasonally from Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Orlando (Port Canaveral), San Juan, Seattle and Vancouver, and year round from New York, Houston and Honolulu.
For further information on NCL, contact a travel agent or NCL in the US and Canada at (800) 327-7030; in Miami-Dade County, Fla., (305) 436-0866. To download high resolution photography visit www.ncl.com/hires.
source: NCL
tyler
Two more Freestyle Cruising Ships – largest ever built –
for delivery in 2005 and 2006
Miami, September 19, 2003 -- Star Cruises announced today that it has finalized orders earlier this week for two new Freestyle Cruising ships for its Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) brand for delivery in Fall 2005 and Spring 2006, continuing an expansion and renewal program that has seen a new ship added every year since Star Cruises acquired the long-established brand.
The two ships will be built at Meyer Werft in Germany, continuing a relationship that has seen the building by that 200 year-old family-owned yard of four ships for the Star/NCL group: Superstar Leo, Superstar Virgo, Norwegian Star and Norwegian Dawn.
“Star Cruises is committed to the North American market and to completely renewing the NCL fleet by adding at least one new ship a year,†said Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, Chairman and CEO of Star Cruises Group. “In just three and a half short years, we have committed almost $2.5 billion to new ships for NCL with half of that investment already being in service and the other half under construction. With the introduction of these latest two ships in 2005 and 2006, we will have increased NCL’s capacity by nearly 13,500 berths since 2000, all on new, state-of-the-art ships.â€Â
The two vessels, known currently as hull S.667 and S.668, will be based in large part on the highly successful Norwegian Dawn/Norwegian Star design, with modifications in both technical and passenger areas. Both ships will be capable of the same high 24-25 knot speeds as their recent sister ships. Gross tonnage will be slightly higher than Norwegian Dawn at an estimated 93,000 GRT and the passenger capacity of each will be 2,400 lower berths.
The first contract is in dollars and the second in Euro. The two ships together will cost approximately Euro 703 million or $790 million at today’s exchange rates, including allowances for owner-supplied items.
“Freestyle Cruising and our break with traditional cruise ship design have clearly changed the face of cruising," said Colin Veitch, President and CEO of NCL, “and at an estimated all-in cost of less than $170,000 per berth these additional 4,800 berths will be a huge boost to the financial success we are already having with our new Freestyle Cruising ships. These ships will be the largest we have ever built, and will enable us to continue the expansion of our popular Homeland Cruising deployment around the coast of North America.“
Already we are selling regularly scheduled cruises out of 14 North American home ports and our ambition is to bring a modern cruise ship to every major coastal population center in North America,†Veitch continued.
The new design will continue many of the features that have proven so popular and successful on Norwegian Dawn and Norwegian Star, with 10 different restaurants including a steak house, an Asian restaurant/sushi bar/teppanyaki room (now with two tables versus the current one), Italian, French, and Spanish restaurants, two main dining rooms, and a coffee shop/casual eatery located in the center of the atrium; enormous health, fitness, and spa facilities; generous children and teen areas with a dedicated children’s outdoor pool area; a 1000+ seat opera-style theatre; a high-energy top-of-the-ship nightclub; karaoke facilities and private karaoke rooms; a state of the art casino with player tracking and the highest table limits at sea; a department store-style shopping area, and extensive meeting and conference facilities.
Modifications from Norwegian Dawn include several new public areas on which details will be released closer to delivery.
The new ships will also feature the very latest in environmental and safety management systems, including advanced wastewater treatment plants for the treatment of all gray and black water streams, sterilizing and drying plants for various solid wastes, additional incineration units and additional water making capacity; water-emulsion injection systems for reduction of NOX emissions from the diesel engines, and shore side discharge pumping systems for closed-system waste disposal to licensed shore side facilities. Each ship will have a CCTV surveillance system with over 1000 cameras monitoring all areas of the ship to assist the officers and crew in their safe and efficient management of operations.
Construction will commence on the first ship at the end of this month and Meyer Werft, one of the most advanced shipbuilding yards in the world, expects to deliver the first vessel in a record 22 months from contract signing.
Commenting on the order, Bernard Meyer, CEO of Meyer Werft, said: “We are extremely pleased to have reached this agreement with NCL and are proud that our previous two ships for Star/NCL have had such a revolutionary impact on the US market that our customer has come back to us for more ships.â€Â
“We have been refining the design and negotiating the contracts on these ships continuously since the delivery of Norwegian Dawn last year," Veitch said. "The new design is truly an advance on what we have already done with Meyer Werft, and reflects the excellent working relationship we have with this yard where creativity and mold-breaking ideas can be turned into attractive and commercially realistic ship designs.â€Â
Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line is an industry innovator. NCL recently announced its new brand, NCL America, under which its US flagged ships will operate. The company is currently building its first US Flagged ship, Pride of America, which begins inter-island Hawaii cruises on July 4, 2004.
Together, with Pride of America next year, and Norwegian Crown transferred this month after undergoing extensive refurbishment, the two new orders bring to 7,950 the number of new berths scheduled to join the NCL fleet between now and 2006, a 50 percent increase over today’s capacity.
NCL is also the leader in roundtrip seven-day cruising from U.S. and Canadian ports, offering its popular Homeland Cruising program seasonally from Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Orlando (Port Canaveral), San Juan, Seattle and Vancouver, and year round from New York, Houston and Honolulu.
For further information on NCL, contact a travel agent or NCL in the US and Canada at (800) 327-7030; in Miami-Dade County, Fla., (305) 436-0866. To download high resolution photography visit www.ncl.com/hires.
source: NCL
tyler
