Helsinki Shipyard Orders Main Equipment for Nornickel’s New Icebreaker
Finnish shipbuilder Helsinki Shipyard Oy announced it has completed purchasing contracts for the main equipment of Nornickel’s icebreaker contracted last year, along with model tests in ice and open water for the icebreaker design developed by Aker Arctic.
Russian mining company Norilsk Nickel ordered the new environmentally friendly icebreaker for its operations in the Yenisei River basin, Yenisei Bay and the Kara Sea securing access to Dudinka seaport both for its own fleet and its partners. The icebreaker’s mission is to make the channel in Yenisei river for Nornickel Arctic Expresses (Arc7) and tow additionally employed fleet of cargo ships Arc5 class with up to 20,000 tons deadweight. The icebreaker’s home port is going to be Murmansk.
The concept design of the new vessel was developed in cooperation with Aker Arctic Technology Oy. The design work is now proceeding according to the planned schedule, including e.g. the ice model tests, which have already been successfully performed. Helsinki Shipyard said project procurement is also proceeding well and purchasing contracts for the main equipment for machinery and propulsion have already been completed. The construction work will begin in 2022 and the vessel will be delivered to the customer for the winter season 2025.
“Receiving new icebreaker by the end of 2024 is very important for Nornickel as it provides additional transportation capacities needed to implement both our strategic investment projects including the city of Norilsk renovation plans. And we are happy to declare that it’s going to be fueled by LNG which goes in line with current environmental trends on decarbonization and will be a pioneer icebreaker on LNG exploited at Nothern Sea Route” said Sergey Dubovitskiy, senior vice president of Norilsk Nickel.
The new icebreaker will be the largest and most powerful diesel-electric icebreaker ever built in Finland. It will have an integrated dual-fuel diesel-electric power plant, which can use both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and low-sulfur diesel oil as fuel with good energy efficiency and low emissions. The vessel will be built for the class notation Icebreaker 8 of the Russian Maritime Register (RMRS) and it will be capable of breaking 2 m thick snow-covered ice when operating either ahead or astern. The ship will also have facilities for transporting cargo and supporting helicopter operations.