Fincantieri Delivers Costa Firenze to Costa Cruises
Carnival Corporation's Costa Cruises has taken delivery of the new cruise ship Costa Firenze designed and built by Fincantieri at its Marghera shipyard.
With 135,500 gross tonnage and a capacity of more than 5,200 guests, the Costa Firenze is part of a €6 billion ($7.3 billion) development plan that includes seven new ships to be delivered for the Costa Group by 2023. Costa Firenze is the fourth of these new ships to be delivered with three more to come.
“The handover of the new Costa Firenze is a sign of hope and restart for the whole cruise and tourism ecosystems. This ship represents the most tangible evidence of the will of our group to restart. Our hope is that people will soon be able to travel again and that more ships will set sail and contribute to the revitalization of tourism in Italy, Europe and globally,” stated Michael Thamm, group CEO of Costa Group and Carnival Asia. “Looking beyond the pandemic, Costa’s goal is to design the future of sustainable and zero emission cruising and we hope that our long-lasting partnership with Fincantieri can bring our companies to work together on a roadmap that can lead to this ambitious yet essential objective.”
Costa Firenze's environmental performance has been acknowledged by RINA, an international certification organization, with Green Star 3, a voluntary notation covering all the main aspects of a ship's environmental impact and requiring maximum protection and prevention across areas such as waste, grey water, black water, machinery oil, CO2, ozone, greenhouse gases, particulate matter, sulphur oxides, nitrogen and ballast water, among others. In addition to honoring compliance with a series of environmental sustainability standards, the certification also recognizes the design solutions and operating procedures that Costa has implemented voluntarily, both during construction and navigation, aimed at outperforming the environmental protection requirements of international regulations.
The ship will first sail in the Mediterranean in 2021, providing two different week-long itineraries in the western Mediterranean. The first itinerary, available from Feb. 28, 2021, includes the Italian destinations of Genoa, La Spezia – with excursions also departing to Florence – and Naples, as well as Valencia, Barcelona and Marseille. The second itinerary, available from May to October 2021, includes Genoa and Civitavecchia, with excursions to Rome, as well as Naples, Ibiza, Barcelona and Marseille. After October 2021, the ship will move to Asia to join her sister ship Costa Venezia, also built by Fincantieri, in the Monfalcone shipyard, and in operation since March 2019.
Giuseppe Bono, CEO of Fincantieri, said, “Costa Firenze is the third cruise ship we have delivered since September and we are pleased that the name of this unit recalls one of the most famous cities of art in Italy and in the world. The delivery is an important moment because it is the concrete demonstration that the company is getting back to its normal production activity. I would also like to underline that the financial and economic situation of Fincantieri has not changed significantly compared to what we communicated in the previous quarters. The company has proven to be very resilient, avoiding the cancellation of orders and strengthening relations with the customers of the cruise sector. We are a growing company, we gained an international reputation and reliability, making further development easier, and we can count on an order book guaranteeing long-term visibility with opportunities to increase efficiency, productivity and profitability.”
