Funding secured for new Rolldock ships

Germany’s KfW IPEX-Bank will contribute €37m to the financing and the Dutch banks ABN AMRO and Rabobank will provide €18.5m each.

The first steel cut for the first new vessel took place at the shipyard last month. The MV Rolldock Star is expected to be delivered in November 2013 and the second ship MV Rolldock Storm is scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2014.

Both vessels are multifunctional heavy lift ships and are almost identical to the Rolldock’s two existing vessels MV Rolldock Sun and MV Rolldock Sea. But the two new vessels are 119,44m in length and 19.4m wide compared to 116,20m length and 19m wide for the existing vessels.

Christian K. Murach, member of the management board of KfW IPEX-Bank, said: “We are very pleased that the young and technically innovative ship owner RollDock gave this complex order to FSG, a shipyard that is highly renowned in the sector. We are proud to contribute to the financing of the innovative high-tech ships and in this way also to utilising capacity and ensuring jobs in Flensburg.”

In recent years the FSG shipyard has become more specialised in the construction of technically advanced and complex ro-ro ships. The Dutch shipping company RollDock ordered the vessels with a revolutionary design that it developed itself.