Finland and Sweden to Cooperate on New Icebreaker Design

Atle

The Nordic countries of Finland and Sweden have agreed to jointly design a new series of icebreakers with two to be built for Finland and three for Sweden. The agreement is between the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency and the Swedish Maritime Administration. The design work on the ships will be carried out as a joint procurement, although no agreement has yet been made on construction of the vessels.

The icebreakers are needed because of the larger size of commercial ships now calling at Finnish and Swedish ports as well as the age of existing icebreakers and new environmental regulations coming into force.

The two countries have carried out close cooperation in the past regarding their icebreaker requirements and jointly collaborated on the design of their current Urho and Atle class icebreakers which were built in the 1970s.

By Pacific Maritime