Homegrown cruise ship to be ready by year-end

China’s first large, domestically made cruise ship is scheduled to be delivered around the end of this year, according to a project manager at China State Shipbuilding Corp, the construction contractor.

“So far, we have completed 90 percent of the cruise ship’s construction. We plan to move the vessel out of the dry dock in June to continue the outfitting process,” Chen Gang, general manager of Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding and chief designer

of the cruise ship, said on March 20.

There will be at least two sea trials in the summer to test the vessel’s overall capability and its subsystems, said Chen.

CSSC, a State-owned conglomerate and the world’s largest shipbuilder, signed a cooperation agreement on the design and construction of two 135,500-metric-ton Vista-class cruise ships with Carnival Corp and Fincantieri in November 2018.