There was good news for To­ba­go yes­ter­day as Nid­co has an­nounced that one of the new fast fer­ries for the seabridge will be launched on May 22 at the Port of Vung Tau in Viet­nam. And when launched, com­mis­sion­ing works for the new fer­ry, chris­tened the APT James, will be un­der­tak­en.

In a brief press re­lease yes­ter­day, Nid­co said com­mis­sion­ing works are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of Ju­ly 2020, sub­ject to cur­rent lim­i­ta­tions of COVID-19 re­stric­tions. It said the de­liv­ery date of the new fer­ry to Port-of-Spain will be sub­se­quent­ly re­leased.

In Ju­ly 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment was “aim­ing to buy two new cus­tom-built fer­ries,” for To­ba­go. The two, he said, would be fast fer­ries which would be about 89 me­tres, sim­i­lar to the T&T Spir­it and T&T Ex­press.

The PM ad­mit­ted back then that it would “take some time for them to be built, but if we put the or­der in now, some­time in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, we are go­ing to get two brand new fast fer­ries, that is what is go­ing to put the To­ba­go fer­ry is­sue to bed once and for all.”

The an­nounce­ment had come in the midst of con­cerns by To­ba­go stake­hold­ers about the eco­nom­ic im­pact of prob­lems ex­pe­ri­enced as a re­sult of an un­re­li­able fer­ry and car­go ser­vice fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of the Su­per Fast Gala­cia.

Sub­se­quent­ly, Aus­tralian com­pa­ny Austal said it had been con­tract­ed by NID­CO to de­sign and build a 94-me­tre high-speed ve­hi­cle and pas­sen­ger cata­ma­ran to be de­liv­ered in mid-2020.

In an an­nounce­ment on its site in De­cem­ber 2018, Austal said it had en­tered in­to a con­tract with Nid­co val­ued at US$63.9 mil­lion (Aus$97,700,000).

The ship, des­ig­nat­ed the 94m Au­to­Ex­press, is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide high-speed pas­sen­ger and ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tions on the seabridge be­tween the is­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The new ves­sel is al­ready paint­ed in the T&T red, white and black colours and is de­signed to car­ry 926 pas­sen­gers and 250 cars at speeds of 37.5 knots.

The ship will al­so fea­ture Austal’s new­ly de­vel­oped and in­dus­try-lead­ing in­no­va­tion in smart ship tech­nol­o­gy, MarineLink Smart.

Austal CEO David Sin­gle­ton said the com­pa­ny’s fleet in Trinidad in­cludes four 41-me­tre cata­ma­ran wa­ter taxis and six 30-me­tre, mono­hull fast pa­trol craft.