The Megastar, commissioned on the Helsinki–Tallinn route on 29 January 2017, is the most advanced passenger ferry on the Baltic Sea. Megastar does not only run on eco-friendly LNG gas, but its highly advanced hull shape produces significant savings in fuel consumption.
Janek Stalmeister, Managing Director of the AS Tallink Grupp, clarifies the company’s vision for its MEUR 230 investment.
“Connecting Finland and Estonia – actually connecting all of Northern Europe with the Baltic countries – and acting as the starting point for this traffic are important goals for us. With Megastar, this route will become the most modern sea route in the entire area. We have conducted studies at Tallink on what our customers want from next generation ships. This was followed by close cooperation with Meyer Turku in order to create a fresh and functional architecture for the ship to please our customers. We are very thankful to Meyer Turku for listening to us and building an excellent ship for us.
This ship incorporates the latest eco-friendly technology and it surpasses our expectations in terms of fuel efficiency and passenger comfort – the ship has minimal oscillation. Megastar is wonderful evidence of Meyer Turku’s quality and Finnish ship-building know-how.”
The ship contains the latest in eco-friendly technology.
Janek Stalmeister
Jan Meyer, Managing Director of Meyer Turku, says that building the Megastar was a multi-discipline project lasting nearly two years.
“We started designing the Megastar by discussing how we could improve passenger ferry traffic through design. This was followed by a nearly year-long design phase connected very closely to prefabrication, assembly, product fine-tuning and testing. The true test, however, is at the end when we assign the large, very complicated ship over to the customer, as we did today. The Tallink Megastar is the result of great teamwork and it is more than the sum of its parts. We would like to thank Tallink for their trust in us and for our excellent cooperation. I also want to thank our ship-building team here in Turku and our many suppliers. You have all done an excellent job in building Megastar.”
The Tallink Megastar is more than the sum of its parts.
Jan Meyer
The Megastar has three passenger classes: the deck passage, i.e. the Star class, the updated Comfort-Lounge and the Business Lounge. For the first time, passengers in Star class have two separate passenger areas – the Sitting lounge and the Driver’s lounge for freight drivers. The ship has seven restaurants, including a buffet restaurant, an à la carte restaurant, a fast food place and several cafes. There are pubs and bars on board, as well. The Megastar also has a play area for children. The Traveller Superstore is a 2,800 square metre shopping centre on two decks.
Megastar also provides improvements for passengers with cars. Cars are loaded into the ship onto two decks, which will make loading and unloading the ship quicker. The shopping centre-like garage can even be accessed during the trip – this is convenient for passengers that want to enjoy shopping on the Megastar.
Megastar is 212 metres long and can carry 2,800 passengers. The ship’s operating speed is 27 knots. Megastar utilises LNG as fuel, but can also run on marine diesel. Thanks to using LNG, the emissions from the ship contain no sulphur, and its nitrogen and carbon dioxide emissions are significantly low. The Megastar is designed for the Helsinki-Tallinn route, and it is in compliance with current and future ECA (Emission Control Area) emission norms on the Baltic. Megastar is partly funded by the European Union and it is part of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).
The new generation LNG ship Megastar is presented to the media in Tallinn on Friday, 27 January 2017.
- Further information on the ship: http://megastar.tallink.com