Stena Line marked a milestone on its journey towards sustainable shipping last week with the Steel Cutting ceremony for the first of its ‘NewMax’ hybrid ferries as construction begins in Weihai, China.
Last year, Stena Line announced that two new hybrid freight ferries had been ordered from Stena RoRo destined for the Belfast – Heysham route, with the first due to enter service in autumn 2025.
The ‘NewMax’ vessels are of a unique design with the most efficient hull form to maximise freight volumes and their addition to the route will boost freight capacity by 80% compared to current ship capacity.
The new hybrid ships will play a key role in Stena Line’s journey to sustainable fuel as they will both be able to operate on methanol fuel. Stena Line is currently working closely with the supply chain of methanol on securing future volumes of e-methanol to fulfil its strategic ambition of shifting to renewable fuels.
In addition to the multi-million pound investment in the ships, Stena Line announced last month it had signed an agreement with Peel Ports to operate in Heysham Port until the end of century, reaffirming its confidence in the continued success of the route.
As part of the new agreement, Stena Line and Peel Ports will aim to secure the shore infrastructure to provide additional electrical capacity to facilitate the future goal of powering the new ships by shore power. The new vessels will have in-built technologies that can take advantage of both battery propulsion and shore power. The ships will be futureproofed with a progressive propulsion configuration that ultimately will allow the vessels to be decarbonised.
An important trading corridor across the Irish Sea, we have seen significant growth in the service in recent years and the extra boost in capacity that the ships will provide will help us to meet customer demand.
..Paul Grant, Trade Director Irish Sea, Stena Line said.
We share a commitment to making our operations more sustainable, and we’re very excited to explore ways to use our port infrastructure to power these new vessels from the electrical grid, which will be a major step towards achieving our ambition to become a net-zero port operator by 2040.”
..Phil Hall, Mersey Port Director at Peel Ports Group, said.
