Russian shipbuilding holding USC designing high ice-class container ship for Rosatom for Northern Sea Route

MOSCOW. March 11 (Interfax) - The design division of United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) is working on creating a container ship for operation in the arctic latitudes of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), the company said.

"To date, USC has successfully completed the development of a preliminary design for a unique arctic container vessel with a container capacity of 4,800 TEU [twenty-foot equivalent units], ordered by JSC Rosatom Arctica, which plans to use the vessel for cargo transportation along the Northern Sea Route," it said.

The container ship is being designed to a high ice class, Arc7, which allows the vessel to navigate ice with a thickness of 1.5 to 1.7 meters (depending on ice density and time of year), it said.

"Out of six alternative architectural and design solutions, differing in layout, propulsion system and type of fuel consumed, based on the results of the analysis together with the customer, we selected the optimal one in terms of container capacity, operational indicators and economic efficiency," the deputy general director for engineering at USC Boris Bogomolov said.

USC was established in accordance with a presidential decree in 2007, with 100% of its shares under federal ownership. Since August 2023, it has been transferred to the trust management of VTB Bank .