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competitive, extremely complicated and
expensive to build with too much propulsion
power. It was a so-called landing platform
dock. The reason we were able to say this
was because we had good references, mainly
ro-ro ships, which had exactly the same main
dimensions, but a much better hull form and
in many respects less complicated machinery
and systems. As a result, we were invited
to the headquarters of the Spanish Navy
together with the Bazan shipyard group to
present our findings. I had to go all by myself,
only one representative from Deltamarin was
allowed as Finland was not part of NATO and
too close to Russia. They didn’t believe in all
our findings, but some of it sunk in, and we got
a chance to improve the design and later on
received a major design contract.”
By 1995, Deltamarin, which had originally
been a subcontracting design office, had
grown into an internationally significant ship
design consultancy and engineering office.
“The Navy orders carried us over the worst
period of recession in 1993-1994,” Kanerva
explains. “We had collected a pretty good
list of references, such as the Prins Filip,
the above-mentioned TT-Line duo and also
several ferries we designed for the French
shipowner Brittany Ferries, which were built
in France, Finland and Germany. Following
this, we started marketing concepts and
designs of our own.”
“By 1995, we were involved in all
passenger car ferries built in Europe in the
size class over 120m. That was impressive.
The ferries were built in France, Spain,
Italy, Greece, Germany and Finland. At that
time, we also started our long-standing
relationship with Stena in Sweden including
several ro-pax ferries and ro-ro’s built in
Spain, Italy, South Korea and most recently
in China, but also including several
conversions before the newbuildings. That
helped us forward, and our designs gained
worldwide recognition. Around that time, we
made a conscious decision to be the leading
designer in the trade. ‘Leading the way’,
became our slogan as well as ‘Deltamarin
makes the difference’. Those slogans
were really good, gave us a lot of good
publicity and were actually copied later by
major companies in other business areas.
Our designs were also recognised with
international awards. The brand name of
Deltamarin was developed on the market.”
OVERCOMING THE RECESSION OF THE 1990s
By 1995, we were involved in all
passenger car ferries built in Europe in
the size class over 120m.