The first icebreaker built in Latin America, the Almirante Oscar Viel, was launched last week after five years of construction at the state-owned ASMAR Naval Shipyard in Talcahuano, Chile.
The Almirante Oscar Viel replaces the icebreaker of the same name (6,300 tons), which was in service from 1995 to 2019 and originally came from the Canadian Ice Patrol.
The construction of this Polar Class 5 icebreaker is a prestige project for Chile and has been closely monitored by the government.
A spokesman for the Chilean Navy stressed that this is ASMAR’s “most ambitious project” since the shipyard was founded in 1960. The new Almirante Viel is 111 meters long, has a beam and a draft of 21 and 7.2 meters, respectively, and a Displacement of around 13,000 tonnes. This makes her the largest ship built by ASMAR to date and the first ship of this type built in South America.
According to local reports, the ship could be fully outfitted by July 2023, with port testing scheduled to start in December 2023 and commissioning in August 2024, allowing enough time to prepare for the first deployment in December-March (Australian summer).
The Almirante Viel is being built as part of the US$215 million Antártica I project to the design VARD 9 203 by Canadian shipbuilder Vard Marine, a subsidiary of Italian naval shipyard Fincantieri.
According to the spokesman, the Chilean Navy will receive a ship that will be used for research in Antarctica, supplying bases, monitoring the sea area and for rescue and salvage operations.
The ship accommodates 35 scientists and 86 crew members. The ship will be able to navigate at a speed of 2 knots (3.7 km/h) through a year-old, one meter thick ice, Maritime Executive reports. When completed, it will be comparable to Argentina’s renovated ARA Almrante Irizar, originally from Finland.
With information from latinapress