NEWS
FIVE MINUTES WITH SAULI ELORANTA, STX FINLAND CRUISES
Sauli Eloranta, STX Finland Cruises
Taking the cover off of the latest in modern cruiseship design
by Henrik Segercrantz
STX Finland Cruise, the Finnish arm of Korean shipbuilder STX, operates three shipyards in Finland. The Finnish shipbuilders have a long tradition of innovation, and have often been the first to introduce new ship designs and solutions, many for the cruise industry. Maritime Reporter & Engineering News talked with Sauli Eloranta, in charge of Product Development and Innovation at STX Finland Cruise. He has worked within the shipbuilding industry in Finland for 20 years already, and took over this demanding task from R&D veteran Kai Levander, who together with his team developed many of the features we can see on cruise ships today. The R&D organization in Finland was recently changed from that of the previous Technology Department which besides R&D for the yards also offered external design and consulting tasks for clients directly, to a line organization utilizing resources also from the sales, marketing and project departments. "I think this is a good solution as it integrates us more firmly into the yard organization, thus making it easier for us to utilize the best available specialists," Eloranta said. "The XpTray cruise ship concept, presented at the Seatrade Cruise Shipping conference in Miami in March, was the first major project launched by the new organization," Eloranta said. "It is a visionary cruise ship concept combining ideas and goals from many different sources." Eloranta lists a number of topics related to the trends within the cruise industry and cruise ship technology and tells Maritime Reporter of his views on where these are heading. Starting with energy efficiency, he notes that a holistic approach is needed. "Most development efforts have focused on trying to increase the energy efficiency with various technologies assuming a certain constant need for energy, without really looking into the design or into ways of operation in order to eliminate the actual needs. I think one should try to see what could be done to reduce or eliminate the need for energy in the first place. In many cases that is the most efficient way to cut energy consumption." By focusing on simplicity and versatility when thinking on new concept designs, Eloranta believes one can find interesting new solutions. A good example here is the new XpTray design, where the traditional cruise ship's
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There will be more sails on cruise ships than today, according to Sauli Eloranta, VP, Product Development & Innovation at STX Finland Cruise.
(Photographs: STX Finland Cruise)
The XpTray cruise ship concept, still waiting to be unveiled in its entirety, provides a straightforward accommodation block with public spaces on three adjacent decks and a big open multipurpose transformable outside area.
(Photographs: STX Finland Cruise)
sun deck was radically altered. An open large multipurpose deck platform, with a narrow accommodation block with all cabins fitted with a balcony, is used instead. This platform is intended for various activities using staging solutions. It changes appearance when used for different purposes in daytime and at night. "The sun deck can be transformed into, say, a seaside cafeteria when the sun sets." Eloranta and his team wanted to eliminate the static areas onboard today's cruise ships, intended for one purpose only and many fitted with their own galleys. "A cruise ship of today is in fact doubled in size," he noted. "There is space for everyone outside at daytime and inside the vessel at night." "Imagine," he continues, "an outdoor fast food restaurant on this deck in daytime, transformed by simple means into, say, a Chinese restaurant in the evening." A main idea is to simplify the accommodation block and to gather the public areas on three adjacent decks, and not to spread them around the vessel. "The currently applied design philosophy is very rigid. Through a design allowing multipurpose usage a compact efficient ship design is achieved. "We are now also looking into the possibility to also place the main theater on the outside platform, although this is quite challenging," Eloranta said. When looking at the cruise ship concept, the now suggested idea is of course quite radical, Eloranta points out, as it is not based on just increasing the ship size, a trend we are getting used to. "Cruise ship arrangements have been, generally speaking, quite similar over time, with the exception of perhaps the development of large horizontal promenades," he said. Showing the graph of cruise ship size development over time, Eloranta notes that a new major industrial platform size is evolving, and should be clearly kept in mind, when looking at where to place the development efforts now. The size of many of the largest future cruise ships will be determined by the new bigger Panama Canal locks, to be taken in use in 2014. "This size range will become at sea something like what the Boeing 737 is in the air." With a cruise ship designed as today, this will result in a gross tonnage of some 150,000gt, although the new Panama Canal will allow even larger, over 200,000gt cruise ships.
Maritime Reporter & Engineering News