By
Rebecca Gibson |
TUI Cruises’ newbuild Mein Schiff 4 was floated out of her drydock at the Meyer Turku yard in Finland on 11 October.
The 2,506-passenger vessel, which has been under construction at the former STX Finland yard since May 2013, left the building dock after it was flooded with 300 million litres of water. The process was started on 10 October when Wybcke Meier, who became CEO of TUI on 1 October, Frank Kuhlmann, CFO of TUI Cruises, Jan Meyer, CEO of Meyer Turku, and other members of the shipyard team opened the bulkheads of the dock.
“As my first official act in my new role at TUI Cruises, setting a well-being ship afloat is a fantastic beginning,” said Meier.
Mein Schiff 4 was towed to the outfitting pier upstream from the shipyard where she will remain for the next few months as her interiors and exteriors are fitted out. Around 1,300 Meyer Turku employees are currently involved in the construction of Mein Schiff 4 and according to the yard’s CEO, 65% of the work has now been completed.
Mein Schiff 4 will become the first TUI ship to be named in Kiel, Germany, on 5 June 2015. Departing the German port, the 995,000gt ship will sail her maiden roundtrip from 6-14 June calling at various ports in the Baltic Sea including Tallinn, Estonia; St Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki, Finland; and Stockholm, Sweden. From 14-18 June, she will then sail another short cruise from Kiel to the Norwegian port of Oslo and the Danish port of Copenhagen.
In summer 2015, Mein Schiff 4 will offer a variety of Baltic Sea itineraries, which also include port calls in Northern Europe and Norway, before embarking on seven-day voyages to the Canary Islands, Morocco and Maderia during the winter cruise season.