Following the acquisition of Symphony Shipping earlier this year, ForestWave Navigation has also secured the services of eight Ecobox vessels. The acquired fleet consists of eight modern open top, one box hold, geared MPPs. This included four 10.500 dwat Ecobox vessels, one 12.500 dwat Ecobox XL, and one Ecobox XL newbuilding, all with Finnish/Swedish ice class 1A and two DP2 Ecoboxes.

Ferus Smit Shipyard has just launched the newbuilding, the Nb. 461, named FWN Arctic. It is the second vessel in a series of two delivered to ForestWave, an Ecobox XL, the evolution of Ecobox and Ecobox DP series that the yard already built over the recent years.

The Ecobox XL design

The new Ecobox XL design has its focus on loading extra long items, such as windmill blades, while at the same time still maintaining good capabilities as a general cargoship. The modifications in design and systems are also aimed to further enhance the vessel’s green performance with a reduction of the EEDI-score to a new class reference standard.

Therefore the original Ecobox design is lengthened by more than 21 meters, extending the box shaped hold to more than 100 meter length on the tanktop, and 112 meters above the movable tweendeck level. The new ships are 18 meters wide, enhancing her cargo deadweight further, and maintaining here flexibility of loading while keeping a very low resistance on both flat water and in waves.

Read also: ForestWave takes over Symphony Shipping and its Ecobox MPP fleet

Fuel consumption is further reduced by integrating a novel ORC waste heat generator in the propulsion system. This system further consists of a 3300 kW main engine driving a nozzled controllable pitch propeller running in fully automatic combinator mode. The fuel system will also be suitable for bio blend fuels.

The vessel has a maximum loading capacity of about 12,500 DWT and two 85-ton cranes.