MSC Cruises celebrated the float-out test of MSC Virtuosa last week at Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire, France, marking the third major milestone in new ship construction that the Company has celebrated this month at the shipyard.
The event was held following the successful delivery on October 31 of MSC Grandiosa, as well as the steel-cutting ceremony for MSC Europa, the first of the Company's five liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered ships.
MSC Cruises also presented, on the same day and jointly with Chantiers de l'Atlantique, an innovative R&D project called PACBOAT, which will focus on integrating a new fuel cell technology, particularly relevant for the LNG-powered ship MSC Europa. The company also expressed its commitment to contributing to the development of next-generation advanced environmental technology, both for its own benefit in terms of environmental management and for the benefit of the entire cruise industry.
MSC Grandiosa was inaugurated in Hamburg the following week, on November 9. The company also announced that, starting January 1, 2020, it will become the world's first carbon-neutral cruise line. MSC Cruises will offset all direct carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its fleet's marine operations through a combination of blue and regular carbon offset projects, developed in accordance with the highest standards by leading international bodies that measure greenhouse gas emissions.
MSC Cruises added that, while it recognizes that today's most advanced maritime environmental technology alone is not enough to achieve carbon neutrality immediately, the company will continue to invest in the accelerated development of advanced environmental technology to eventually achieve its commitment to zero emissions from operations alone.
MSC Virtuosa will be the second Meraviglia-Plus ship, after MSC Grandiosa, and will now be moved to the dry dock for further construction and assembly, until its delivery in October 2020.
MSC Cruises' sixth ship, which will enter service from 2017, MSC Virtuosa, will be as well-equipped as MSC Grandiosa with state-of-the-art technologies and will be the second ship in the Company's fleet to have a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system and next-generation Advanced Wastewater Treatment System (AWTS) to minimize its environmental footprint and ensure increasingly cleaner atmospheric emissions.
MSC Virtuosa's SCR will help reduce nitrogen oxide by 80 percent, using technology that converts it into harmless substances such as nitrogen and water.
The ship will also be equipped with a next-generation AWTS to treat wastewater to a very high quality, resulting in an end product that surpasses most municipal waste standards worldwide.
MSC Virtuosa will also be equipped with shore-to-ship power, which connects a docked cruise ship to a port's local electricity grid to further reduce air emissions. This feature is widely available across the MSC Cruises fleet and has been standard on all the company's new ships since 2017.
These features complement other effective environmental technologies, implemented on MSC Virtuosa and across the rest of the MSC Cruises fleet, to minimize and continuously reduce a cruise ship's environmental impact, including: state-of-the-art hybrid exhaust gas cleaning systems that remove up to 97% of sulfur oxides from the ship's emissions; advanced waste management; ballast water treatment systems; state-of-the-art systems for preventing oil discharges from machinery spaces; and various state-of-the-art energy efficiency improvements, from heat recovery systems to LED lighting.
MSC Virtuosa's maiden voyage will be a 7-night, six-port Western Mediterranean cruise departing from Genoa, Italy, in November 2020. Throughout the winter, the new ship will sail from Barcelona, as is the company's custom, assigning its most modern and innovative ships to this port as a demonstration of its strong, long-term commitment to the Spanish market.
After a winter season in the Mediterranean, MSC Virtuosa will deploy to Northern Europe in the summer of 2021 with itineraries to the Norwegian Fjords and the Baltic Capitals. MSC Cruises will soon reveal the exact details of the exciting features for passengers aboard MSC Virtuosa, but like MSC Grandiosa, the ship will have a Mediterranean promenade lined with restaurants and shops, a 93-meter-long LED Sky Dome, two new and original Cirque du Soleil at Sea shows, and the world’s first virtual personal cruise assistant, ZOE, in every cabin.
The third of the three Meraviglia-Plus ships, yet to be named, will enter service in 2023 and will be powered by LNG. MSC Cruises is also investing €5 billion in the construction of five LNG-powered ships, in addition to the four ships ready to launch the futuristic World Class prototype, the first of which will be the MSC Europa, in May 2022.
The World Class ships, as well as the Meraviglia-Plus prototype, will be built at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in Saint Nazaire, France, as part of an industry-unprecedented €11.6 billion plan that will increase MSC Cruises' current fleet to 25 ships by 2027.
