Carnival Corp has finalised a deal to order its biggest ships ever in a move that sees the cruise giant stick with LNG as a fuel for its newbuildings.
The Miami company, the world’s largest owner and operator of cruise ships, said it booked three vessels that weigh in at 230,000 gross tonnes from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri.
That makes them among the largest passenger vessels in the world, although still behind two 250,000-gt monsters that rival Royal Caribbean Group has ordered.
The Fincantieri newbuildings, to be delivered between 2029 and 2033, will operate in the flagship Carnival Cruise Line brand.
“We are doubling down on the growth of Carnival Cruise Line — our highest-returning brand — to keep up with the incredibly strong demand we continue to see for the world’s most popular cruise line,” Carnival chief executive Josh Weinstein said in an announcement.
“At this point, our newbuild pipeline is just one delivery in each of 2025, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2031 and 2033. We continue to take a disciplined approach to growth, strategically directing new capacity to the areas of highest demand at a rate of one to two new ships per year.”
The trio will contribute to 1.5% average capacity growth per year, the CEO said.
“This gives us the headroom to strategically provide new capacity to the brands in our portfolio like Carnival Cruise Line, which provide outsized returns while continuing to execute against our responsible capital strategy, using our strong free cash flow over the next several years to improve our balance sheet, significantly reduce our debt, and continue to transfer value from debt holders to shareholders,” he said.
The vessels will be powered by LNG, bringing New York and London-listed Carnival’s fleet to 16 natural gas-powered vessels.
While some environmental groups have been critical of LNG as a fuel for shipping because of methane emissions, Carnival executives have stood behind the fuel.
In 2023, chief maritime officer William Burke said Carnival was taking a pause as it figured out what to do next with its orderbook — and that involved looking at LNG and methanol.
But in an interview on the 5,200-berth Carnival Celebration (built 2022) a year later, he said LNG is the best fuel available.
“It’s better than the heavy fuels or the marine gasoil that we typically use because it’s got a better greenhouse gas footprint,” Burke said at the time.
Tom Strang, Carnival’s senior vice president of maritime affairs, said in the same article that the company has been seeing significant improvement in engine technology since the first LNG-fuelled cruise ship arrived in 2018.
“Methane slip can be solved. We know how to solve methane slip now,” he said in the LNG-fuelled ship’s engine room.
The latest order was widely expected, with Italy’s Il Secolo XIX newspaper reporting in January that the cruise giant was working on a €5bn ($5.4bn) order for four giant ships at Fincantieri.
In the company’s announcement on Tuesday, Carnival focused on the newbuildings “fun” features, although details of the design are expected at a later date.
The vessels will carry 8,000 guests at full capacity in more than 3,000 state rooms.
“We are proud to be known as America’s cruise line with tremendous guest loyalty and an outstanding team that has enabled us to deliver memorable vacations to over 100m guests,” Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy said in the announcement.
“For this next-generation ship, we are focused on creating innovative guest experiences that will take Carnival Cruise Line into the future with new FUN features and excitement that we know our guests will love.”
