Estonia's new icebreaker to carry undersea cable repair equipment
Estonia's new icebreaker will be equipped with undersea cable repair equipment, allowing it to quickly repair broken connections in the Gulf of Finland and elsewhere after a spate of damage by shadow fleet vessels.
The State Fleet needs a new icebreaker to replace the more than 60-year-old Tarmo.
The multifunctional vessel will be partly purchased using funds from the EU's Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), which has allocated €33.6 million for the new ship.
But this is only a quarter of the estimated cost.
"We actually applied to that program for half the cost of the icebreaker. The total cost is planned to be about €122 million. We received a positive funding decision, but as it stands, this covers only a quarter of what was planned," said State Fleet Director General Andres Laasma.
He said the amount is still the largest ever granted in the European Union for the construction of such ships.
Whether the missing almost €90 million can be secured during state budget strategy negotiations will be decided in the fall.
Under current plans, Tarmo should remain in service until 2028, and the new vessel could be completed in 2029.
Each year, it takes more and more money to keep Tarmo operational, Laasma said. Building a new ship makes more sense.
"The life of any vessel can be extended to some extent, but the investments needed are unreasonably large, considering that each such major investment adds no more than five years of service life. We can indeed gain additional service years, but reliability in that respect is not guaranteed," the director general explained.
Repairing underwater cables
The new vessel will have the capacity to carry the equipment needed for repairing submarine cables.
"This ship itself will not house such a plant, but it will have the capability to carry one in order to repair cables, because in today's circumstances we see that cable breakages have started to occur quite frequently, and their impact on Estonia's economy is enormous. This is because specialized ships are very difficult to obtain from around the world, and their queues are very long," the State Fleet head noted.
Around a dozen cables and pipelines have been damaged since October 2023, mostly by ships dragging their anchors. The vessels are suspected to belong to Russia's shadow fleet, old and poorly maintained ships used to circumvent sanctions.
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Editor: Mait Ots, Helen Wright
