Icebreaker order cancelled

For years, Finland's shipyards have done very good business building high-quality ships for Russia. This is now coming to an end. Helsinki Shipyard has announced that the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused an export licence for the delivery of a large icebreaker to a Russian customer. It would have been the largest and most powerful icebreaker ever built in Finland. The order had already been placed in January by the Russian mining group Norilsk Nickel, which wanted to deploy the new diesel-electric propulsion vessel, which was designed for service in northern Siberia, on the Yenisei and in the Kara Sea. It was supposed to be able to break ice up to two metres thick and be delivered before the winter season. Without an export licence, this will now come to nothing.

Helsinki Shipyard, once the country's most efficient shipyard and since 2011 initially partially and from 2015 fully Russian-owned, has, like the Pella Sietas shipyard in Hamburg, which was also taken over by Russian owners, largely focussed on business with Russian customers. However, as a result of the EU sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, the basis for this business has been removed.