Assembly work has started at the Meyer shipyard in Turku, Finland on the hull of Costa Toscana, the second ship in the Costa Cruises fleet to be powered by liquefied natural gas, the “cleanest” fossil fuel in the world.
Costa Toscana is the sister ship of Costa Smeralda, which came into service on Dec. 21. Thanks to the use of liquefied natural gas, an innovation that the Costa Group was the first to introduce in the cruise sector, this new class of low environmental impact ships can virtually eliminate sulfur dioxide emissions (zero emissions) and particulate matter (95-100% reduction), also significantly reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides (85% direct reduction) and CO2 (reduction of up to 20%). Costa Toscana and Costa Smeralda are part of an expansion plan that includes a total of seven new ships being delivered to the Costa Group by 2023, for a total investment of over six billion euros. As many as five of these ships are fuelled by LNG.
The start of hull assembly work on Costa Toscana was celebrated with a ceremony involving the top management of Costa Cruises and the Meyer Turku shipyard. The mayor of Turku, Minna Arve, was chosen as the godmother of the event. According to naval tradition, during the ceremony a number of commemorative coins were placed on the keel of the ship as a symbol of good wishes for members of the crew, passengers and future journeys. Over the next few weeks, the ship will begin to take shape in the shipyard’s dry dock, where a large section of the hull has already been positioned. This measures 100 metres and corresponds to the “floating engine room unit,” containing the ship’s engines.
The inaugural cruise of Costa Toscana will leave Hamburg on June 28, 2021, 14 days with a final destination of Savona, Naples and a program that includes long calls of two days and one night in Lisbon, Barcelona and Marseille. During summer 2021 and until the first week of November, Toscana will offer one-week cruises to the western Mediterranean, calling at Savona, Cagliari, Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona and Marseille.
