| Carnival tightens yard ties |
| Carnival Corp has announced plans for nine additional newbuilds and sealed strategic partnerships with Italy’s Fincantieri and Germany’s Meyer Werft. Memorandums of agreement were signed for five newbuilds at Fincantieri to be built at the Monfalcone and Marghera yards for deliveries in 2019-2022. Four newbuilds would be built during the same period at Meyer Werft-owned yards in Papenburg, Germany and Turku, Finland. No information was disclosed on which Carnival Corp brands would order the nine ships, their price or their size, although the cruise giant did state that the newbuilds would feature “ground-breaking new designs” and would serve established markets in North America and Europe “as well as newer markets, including China”. An undisclosed number of options are also involved in the yard agreements. “Additional new ship orders are being explored over the coming decade,” affirmed Carnival Corp. The announcement was unusual in that it stressed “long-term strategic partnerships” with the yards versus traditional one-off newbuild contracts. In terms of the scale of the ordering, the latest announcement is in line with Carnival Corp’s targeted average of two to three new ship deliveries per year – and it doubles the total number of newbuilds on order. Following the debut of P&O’s Britannia earlier this month, Carnival Corp has nine firm orders booked through 2018: one for AIDA for delivery this year; one each for AIDA, HAL, CCL and Seabourn in 2016; one for Princess in 2017; one each for Seabourn, CCL and HAL in 2018. |