Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL), the world's second largest cruise shipping group, is in talks with Meyer Turku Shipyard about significant new orders, a Finnish media report said.
"If a deal will be struck, construction of the vessels would take place in the beginning of the next decade. It would bring work to Turku for several years," the Helsingin Sanomat daily reports on its website.
Jan Meyer, ceo of the Turku yard, was quoted by the paper as saying. "Royal Caribbean is the second largest cruise shipping company in the world. Of course I hope that they would order new ships from us in the future. However, at this moment there are no news." The Turku shipyard's latest deliveries to the RCCL group were the first two Oasis class vessels of Royal Caribbean International, the contemporary market unit of the group.
The paper also mentioned that the shipyard, which is owned by the German Meyer family, would soon finalise an earlier agreed contract to build two ships to Carnival, which it described as a UK company.
Carnival plc, which owns P&O Cruises, P&O Cruises Australia, Princess Cruises and AIDA Cruises, is a British company, while Carnival Corporation, which owns the other brands of the Carnival Corp & plc group, is a Panamanian company that is headquartered in the US. The two trade as a single entity and have identical boards and top management.
