Last year’s announcement from Jadrolinija about the concept of a new ship for better connection of the outer Croatian islands with the mainland should finally be realized.
According to the new conceptual project, Jadrolinija’s ferry to remote Croatian islands is to have a capacity for 900 passengers and 200 cars. The value of this investment is estimated at around 25 million Euros.
However, this amount is two times lower than expected in the project of the former company management, which envisaged an amount of 50 million Euros for the new ferry.
Last year, the largest Croatian passenger and car transport company Jadrolinija engaged the Polish company ''Remontowa Marine Design&Consulting'' to make a draft of the project documentation following a public tender. The Polish engineers designed a 120-metre long ferry with a payload of 10,000 tonnes, which was estimated at 50 million Euros. Thus, the new ship with a capacity for 1,500 passengers and 220 vehicles would be the most powerful ferry in the current Jadrolinija's white fleet.
However, after the personnel changes and the appointment of a new management director in Jadrolinija, it was concluded that the 50-million Euros new ferry was a large and unjustified expense thus a new design project was ordered to realize the concept of a smaller and significantly cheaper ferry for connecting outer islands to the mainland.
Therefore, instead of 120 metres, the new ferry will be 102,6 metres in length, whilst the capacity was reduced from the initial 1,500 to 900 passengers. It will replace the inadequate and outdated ‘’Lastovo’’ ferry, which was built in 1970 and has capacity for 500 passengers and only 60 cars.