Fincantieri starts the construction of the second one of the three ships for Virgin Voyages



Friday in the ship yard of Sestri West (Genoa) of the Fincantieri group has carried out the ceremony for the cut second sheet of three cruise ships commissioned by Virgin Voyages, brand of the Virgin group. The new ship, as the twin units, will have about 110.000 tons of tonnage, a length of 278 meters, a width of 38, and will be delivered in 2021.

In occasion of the ceremony the founder of the group Virgin, Sir Richard Branson, has revealed the name of the first unit under construction near the same yard: Scarlet Lady, inspired from the name of one of the first airplane in service near the fleet of Virgin Atlantic. Scarlet Lady will take the sea in 2020, while the third ordered ship to Fincantieri will be completed in 2022.

The three ships will be equipped of beyond 1.400 cabins in a position to accommodating on board more than 2.700 passengers, assisted from a crew of 1.150 people.

While the government of the United States has assigned to the consortium guided from Lockheed Martin, of which Fincantieri Marinette Marine (FMM takes part), an order with the instrument of the Undefinitized Contract Action, as advance payment on the contract of Foreign Military Sales for the construction of four units Fine Surface Combatants (MMSC) destined to Saudi Arabia. The ships will be constructed in the plant Fincantieri di Marinette, in the Wisconsin. The advance payment will finance, for a amount until 450 million dollars, the start of the detail planning and the planning for the construction of the four units and will be shared mainly between Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri Marinette Marine.

Friday, moreover, the managing director of Fincantieri, Giuseppe Bono, has announced that in the morning it has passed away Corrado Antonini, former managing director and former president of Fincantieri: "it leaves - it has emphasized Bono - a patrimony us of wisdom, moral rigor and honesty. We will follow its example. This company makes the things respectable, and this has introduced us in the world". Between the message of mourning for the dead women of Antonini, that of the Federation of the Sea: "the Federation of the Italian marine system expresses great sadness for the disappearance of the president of Corrado Antonini honor, Knight of Labor, of which it very remembers the role played to the summit of the organization in order fourteen years, always carried out with authority, enthusiasm and diplomacy, it is in homeland that abroad. Its long presidency between 1997 and 2011 - it has evidenced the Federation of the Sea - is characterized for impulse that it has intentional to give to cluster marine, of which it has known to not only put in evidence the role of first floor that it carries out to the aims of the economic and social development, in the many coastal towns but in all the Country".