The Stena Transit is the final vessel for Stena’s North Sea major investment programme. The project involved the investment of approximately 1 billion Euros over a five year period and consisted of several new vessel orders and modifications to vessels in the existing Stena fleet.
Solar Solve Marine, the South Shields based manufacturer of the SOLASOLV® brand of boat sun blinds for navigation bridge windows was chosen to supply their SOLASAFE® product to both the Stena Transporter and Stena Transit.
The vessels are RoRo cargo and passenger vessels with an overall length of 212m at a beam of 26.7m and a draught of 6.3m. With 5 cargo decks the vessels freight capacity is 30 percent larger when compared to existing vessels. Both vessels were built at Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea at a cost of approximately 110 million Euros each and were delivered with 33 SOLASAFE® boat sun blinds installed at the navigation bridge windows.
SOLASAFE® boat sun blinds use a sophisticated solar shade film to protect crew against the harsh effects of sun glare and heat gain whilst offering a 100% completely clear outside view. By rejecting up to 93% of glare they significantly reduce eye-strain and reflection ensuring modern computer displays are easier to read, so human errors are less likely to occur. The boat sun blinds also have impressive heat rejecting properties and can reduce up to 87% of the sun’s heat to help reduce fatigue by creating a more comfortable and cooler working environment for the crew. This also reduces the need for air-conditioning which means that environmentally conscious fleet owners can benefit from fuel savings while lowering their CO₂ emissions if they install boat sun blinds at every window on the bridge.
Paul Hopkins, Solar Solve Marine’s Sales and Marketing Executive commented, “When we first started exporting to South Korea over 20 years ago we only used to supply 3 boat sun blinds per vessel as standard. Today, as owners realise the benefits of using our product we are finding that more often than not the entire bridge is being screened. With an average lifespan of over 10 years SOLASAFE® boat sun blinds have become the markets brand leader with a reputation for high quality and reliability being backed up with the fact that we have now supplied 125,000 boat sun blinds to more than 12,500 vessels worldwide.”
