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Written by Kari Reinikainen Kari Reinikainen
Category: Top Headlines Top Headlines
Published: 06 November 2015 06 November 2015

A new company has been established to take over the Fosen shipyard and it is this firm, called Fosen Yard AS that will carry out the refurbishment of the Hurtigruten ships.

Noryards Fosen that filed for bankruptcy last month remains insolvent.

It is not party in the Hurtigruten contract and thus it has not been saved from insolvency.

A corrected version of the article follows:

Hurtigruten, the Norwegian company that operates expedition cruises and a coastal express service, will renovate four 1990s built vessels and a recently acquired expedition cruise vessel at Fosen Yard AS, a new company that has been established to take over the yard.

Polarlys, Kong Harald, Nordkapp and Nordnorge will undergo a total transformation of their interiors in the course of next year. The fours ships will assume a contemporary, brighter interiors in the refits. In addition, the Spitsberge  that Hurtigruten acquired from Portugal recently will be converted to a small expedition cruise vessel from ferry. The contract is reportedly worth NOK550 million in total.

The four vessels were all built between 1993 and 1997 and they measure about 11,300 gross tons. They have accommodation for about 600 passengers each. The Spitsbergen has 320 berths and it was built in 2009. It is due to enter service in 2016 with new interiors designed by Tillberg Design of Sweden.

Noryards Fosen that previously owned and operated the Fosen shipyard filed for bankruptcy on 23 September after a Norwegian company had cancelled an order for an offshore services vessel and the board’s efforts to find other work to keep the yard in business had failed. Noryards Fosen was part of the Noryards Group, which is controlled by the Ukrainian shipbuilding group Zaliv.