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.”
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.”
“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.”
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.
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