Grimaldi christens 3rd hybrid RoRo newbuild

Italian shipping company Grimaldi has christened Eco Livorno, the third hybrid roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) unit of Grimaldi Green 5th Generation (GG5G) vessel class.

On 2 March 2021, the brief ceremony was held on the occasion of the ship’s inaugural call in the Port of Livorno – its first Italian stop since the vessel left the Chinese Jinling shipyard located in Nanjing.

Delivered in January this year, Eco Livorno flies the Italian flag and has a length of 238 meters, a width of 34 meters, and a gross tonnage of 67,311 tonnes.

The eco-friendly GG5G-class ships are said to be the largest short sea RoRos in the world.

With a transport capacity of over 500 trailers, these green giants are able to halve CO2 emissions compared to the previous series of RoRo ships operated by the group, and even to reduce them to zero while they are at berth: during port stays, GG5G-class ships can in fact use the electrical energy stored by mega lithium batteries with a total power of 5MWh, which are recharged during navigation thanks to shaft generators and 350 m2 of solar panels.

Moreover, they are equipped with electronically controlled engines and an exhaust gas cleaning system for the abatement of sulphur and particulate emissions.

“With the Paris Agreement on climate change, shipowners around the world have undertaken to reduce ship emissions by 50% by 2050; with this investment in new ships, our group achieves this goal thirty years earlier than the others,” Emanuele Grimaldi, Managing Director of the group, commented.

On 3 March, at the end of commercial operations, the Eco Livorno will set sail from the Tuscan port to begin serving regularly the RoRo connection between Livorno, Savona, Barcelona and Valencia.

The first ship from the batch, Eco Valencia, joined the company in October 2020, while the second unit, Eco Barcelona, was handed over to the Italian group in early January 2021.