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Finnish shipbuilder Meyer Turku has celebrated the end of 2023 with another big milestone — the hull assembly of Royal Caribbean International’s Star of the Seas has begun at the yard.

On December 15, 2023, the keel laying ceremony was held for Star of the Seas, the cruise company’s second LNG-fueled Icon-class ship.

At the Meyer Turku shipyard, a crane lowered a massive steel block to the bottom of the construction pool on trestles to signal the start of assembling the ship’s hull. Under the steel block were left the coins placed there by the ship’s owner and builder’s representatives a moment before.

“Star of the Seas is very important for both the shipyard and the partner network: the 13,000 man-years spent on building the ship create employment and business in Varsinais-Suomi and, with the supply chains, significantly wider as well. Once the ship is complete, it will strengthen a completely new kind of cruise experience with the standards set by its sister ship Icon,” Tim Meyer, CEO of Meyer Turku, commented.

The Star of the Seas is planned for delivery in the summer 2025. Set to debut in Port Canaveral, Florida in August 2025, it will be the company’s third ship powered by LNG, apart from the Icon of the Seas and Oasis Class vessel scheduled to debut in spring 2024.

The Star of the Seas will be combining the use of the cleanest-burning marine fuel available to date with a lineup of environmental programs on board. With applications ranging from waste heat recovery systems to shore power connection, Royal Caribbean’s most sustainable ship will advance parent company Royal Caribbean Group’s journey to introducing a net-zero cruise ship by 2035.

The keel laying comes only weeks ahead of the anticipated introduction of the Icon of the Seas. Believed to be the world’s largest and most advanced cruise ship to date, Icon of the Seas was delivered to the US-based cruise company a month ago. The newbuilding readies for its January 2024 debut in Miami.