In another sign of the serious attention methanol fueling is getting in the cruise industry, TUI Cruises’ newbuild Mein Schiff 7 will be methanol ready.
The first steel block of Mein Schiff 7 was put in place earlier this week in a keel-laying ceremony at the Meyer Turku shipyard in Finland. The 315.7 meter long, 2,894-passenger vessel is structurally a sister ship to Mein Schiff 1 and Mein Schiff 2, which went into service in 2018 and 2019, and is scheduled to join the fleet in the coming year.
There will be a number of differences in passenger spaces and amenities to the sister ships — and also in the machinery. While the sister ships are equipped with scrubbers Mein Schiff 7 will operate on low sulfur fuel oil (sulfur content 0.1%). In additions, says TUI Cruises, “Mein Schiff 7 will be built in such a way that it can also run on methanol, potentially green methanol, which will make the ship’s propulsion system almost CO2-neutral.”
“We are very happy that the first block of the ship could be laid as planned and look forward to the further milestones that lie ahead of us,” said Meyer Turku CEO Tim Meyer. “With the laying of the keel, a quarter of the shipbuilding is complete.”
“The decision to prepare the Mein Schiff 7 for a methanol drive is an important investment in the future for us and an important contribution to climate-neutral cruises,” says Wybcke Meier. Furthermore, the Mein Schiff 7 will be equipped with an innovative system that shreds organic waste through thermal treatment and prepares it for further use on land in order to achieve even more efficient waste processing.
TUI Cruises is a joint venture between Royal Caribbean Group and German travel company TUI.
This is not the Meyer Group’s only venture into a cruise ship application of methanol fueling. As we reported earlier, a new operation, Meyer Wismar, is currently handling completion of the former Global Dream into a new Disney Cruises vessel. That project will include converting the ship’s engines for operation on methanol.
