Eco Savona Grimaldi Hybrid Ro-Ro Cargo (IMO: 9859569) in Barcelona
The twelve RoRo cargo ships of the GG5G class (Grimaldi Green 5th Generation) currently under construction are operated in two largely identical variants by the Italian shipping company Grimaldi Group and the Finnish shipping company Finnlines.
The ship’s design was developed by the Danish naval architects Knud E. Hansen in Helsingør. The construction of the ships was commissioned on April 26, 2018 at the CSC Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing. The first units were delivered from 2020. The nine ships for Grimaldi will be mainly used on various RoRo cargo services in the Mediterranean, while the Finnlines ships are intended for Northern European services. The three units intended for Finnlines were created in a revised version due to the different requirement profile with a higher proportion of trailers, paper products and containers.
The design was featured in the Royal Institution of Naval Architects’ annual publication Significant Ships of 2020 and won the 2021 ShipPax Ro-Ro Technology and Environmental Award and Ferry Shipping’s RoRo Ferry of the year Summit 2021 awarded.
The ships are propelled by two MAN 9S50ME-C9.6 eight-cylinder two-stroke diesel engines with a combined output of 25,560 kW. The engines act on two controllable pitch propellers and enable a speed of up to 20 or almost 21 knots. The mooring and casting off maneuvers are supported by a bow thruster. The aerodynamically designed forecastle is particularly striking.
The GG5G class has a number of innovations designed to make its operation more environmentally friendly. A hybrid system supplied by the company Kongsberg with a battery pack with a capacity of five megawatt hours should allow the ships to maneuver in the harbor without emissions. Silverstream Technologies supplied an air lubrication system for the underwater hull, which is said to reduce fuel consumption by six percent, and large parts of the superstructure are equipped with solar panels to support the power supply.
CSC Jinling Shipyard is a Chinese shipbuilding firm founded in 1952, and a subsidiary of the state owned China Merchants Industry, based in Nanjing in Jiangsu Province.
The yard reached preliminary agreement to build the Titanic II, a replica of the original Titanic, the plan of which is now apparently ‘almost done with production’ – although no real evidence of such production actually exists.
Nanjing Jinling Shipyard’s Nanjing (330,000 m2 (82 acres)) and Yizheng (900,000 m2 (220 acres)) yards spread along 3.25 km (2.02 mi) of shoreline and build cargo ships, floating docks, submarines, etc. Exports started in 1996, since when Jinling has exported about 200 vessels to over 20, or 30 countries. Over 900 staff are employed, including over 300 senior and medium-grade engineers. There are dry docks of 100,000 DWT and 200,000 DWT, 8 50,000 DWT slipways, 3 fitting-out piers and 9 heavy lifting cranes with capacities of 500, 300 and 150 tons. Annual production can be up to 1,900,000 DWT.
