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Steel cutting for Mein Schiff 5 starts at Meyer Turku

Steel cutting for Mein Schiff 5 starts at Meyer Turku
Construction of TUI Cruises' Mein Schiff 5 has began at Meyer Turku yard in Finland.

The event was witnessed by members of Meyer Turku, TUI Cruises, DNV GL and media representatives. The cutting machine was started by Mike Schwanke, marketing director of TUI Cruises.

Mein Schiff 5 is the third Mein Schiff class cruise ship being built at Turku Shipyard.

Mein Schiff 3 was delivered in May 2014 and Mein Schiff 4 - which was floated out around five weeks ago - will be delivered to TUI Cruises in spring 2015.

The start of production of Mein Schiff 6 will take place about a year from now.

'The team at Meyer Turku is very pleased and excited to start the production of Mein Schiff 5. Together with our workers, Finnish maritime network and our client TUI Cruises we are looking positively into the future,' said Jan Meyer, ceo of Meyer Turku Oy.

'We have set ourselves ambitious goals for the next few years, with plans to expand our cruise fleet between now and 2017 from three ships today to six, with 14,000 beds in total,' commented Wybcke Meyer, ceo of TUI Cruises.

The 99,500gt cruise ships are approximately 294mtr long and 36mtr wide. They have 2,500 lower beds and a crew of 1,000. Special attention has been paid to environmental friendliness and energy efficiency of the ships. Each vessel in the series of ships brings approximately 5,000 person-years of labour to Meyer Turku shipyard and a significant amount of labour for the Finnish maritime industry network as well. The domestic content of these ships is approximately 80%.