Construction, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Tourism, Transport

The keel-laying ceremony of the new vessel will take place at the Meyer shipyard in Turku, Finland on February 9.

Janek Stalmeister, CEO of AS Tallink Grupp, said the name was chosen as a suitable addition to the names of the members of the family of Tallink Shuttle fast ferries, which include the Star and the Superstar.

"Since it will be one of the largest fast ships of its kind in the world, the name Megastar also is well fitted to convey the characteristics of the ship. Besides the name is easy to pronounce in Estonian, Finnish and other languages," Stalmeister said, adding that Megastar was proposed as the name of the new vessel on more than 300 occasions.

Altogether 14,200 potential names of the new vessel were put forward in the naming competition from Finland, 5,300 from Estonia and 2,050 via the international website.

The ferry will be approximately 212 meters in length with a gross tonnage of 49,000 and a capacity of 2,800 passengers. The ship that will cost 230 million euros to build is intended for shuttle operations on the Tallinn-Helsinki route following completion at the beginning of 2017.

The environmentally friendly ship will use LNG as fuel and have a service speed of 27 knots. Its environment- friendliness is expressed also in higher energy efficiency compared with the existing ships of the Tallink Shuttle family. The innovative hull form minimizes the hydrodynamic flow resistance and provides good speed capability in difficult ice conditions. Efficient and fast cargo turnaround in ports also has been taken into account in the design of the new generation fast ferry.

With a fleet of 16 vessels, AS Tallink Grupp is a leading passenger and cargo transportation company in the northern part of the Baltic Sea. It serves six different routes under the Tallink and Silja Line trade marks, carrying up to nine million passengers annually. The group employs approximately 7,000 people.