Orange Marine, a subsidiary of telecoms giant Orange, is contracting Colombo Dockyard and Vard to build a new cable ship.
The new vessel will be the first cable ship of its generation specially designed for the maintenance of submarine cables, both fibre optic telecoms cables and inter-array power cables used in offshore windfarms.
The ship, delivering in early 2023, will replace the C/S Raymond Croze, launched in 1983, which has carried out more than one hundred cable repairs, mostly in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Red Sea.
“We will have a new and high-performance tool, with a low environmental footprint, which will allow us to offer high-quality services for several decades to our customers, not only owners of submarine telecommunications cables but also operators of offshore wind farms,” said Didier Dillard, CEO of Orange Marine.
The ship will feature a streamlined hull, Azipod marine propulsion thrusters and a hybrid energy management system based on fuel production and electrical storage back-up using batteries.
