Dubbed 'G5GG', which stands for 'Grimaldi's 5 th Generation of Green ships', the freighters will have a massive cargo intake, believed to be in the region of 500 trailers.

Shippax understands that the Group has already finalized the project but negotiations with potential builders are still ongoing. Emanuele Grimaldi, who expected the order to be signed early next year with a delivery time between two and three years, explained that the ships will be extremely environmental friendly and energy efficient.

Although they will not be LNG-powered, all the energy efficiency lessons learned from the Finnlines retrofits will be implemented. Scrubbers will be installed from the outset and the newbuilds will obviously have an optimized hull form together with a Promas Lite propulsion system.

Grimaldi Group's own energy efficiency department played a key role in the development of this next generation ro-ro freighters but when it comes to the characteristics of the ships, Mr Grimaldi played his cards close to his chest, only stating that, "they will be the biggest short-sea ro-ro ships in the world."

Towards the end of next year, Grimaldi Group will also order extra ro-pax capacity, but no details are available yet. "It's still early days," Mr Grimaldi told Shippax, "Much will depend on how the market will develop and on the company acquisitions we are working on."

In the meantime, the Neapolitan Group also announced that the six so-called Jingling ro-ro freighters that are operated by Finnlines will be lengthened next year, increasing their capacity by almost 1,000 lanemetres. A similar exercise is also in the pipeline for four to six Eurocargo-class freighters that were built by Hyundai Mipo. Their capacity will be increased from 3,810 lanemetres to nearly 5,000 lanemetres.

© Shippax / Philippe Holthof