Rosatom is ready to give the 77 billion rubles (€1.70 billion) contract to a foreign company.
As BarentsObserver reported, the Baltic Shipyard in St.Petersburg has started construction of Russia’s next generation nuclear-powered icebreaker, which will be the largest in the world.
Baltic Shipyard, which is part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, is the only bidder for the tender to build the next two icebreakers in the series. The shipyard is, however, not able to agree with the buyer Rosatomflot on the price, Izvestia writes.
The tender on the two vessels has a 77.5 billion rubles (€1.72 billion) price tag, but the shipyard claims that it cannot build the two icebreakers for less than 86.1 billion rubles (€1.92 billion).
Rosatom is not ready to give any concessions and says that the contract could very well be given to a foreign company:
“On the world market there are companies with appropriate experience in construction of icebreakers that are capable of handling the task. Sure, we want the icebreakers to be built be a Russian company, but if a foreign company capable of fulfilling the state orders at the specified price is to take part in the second tender, we could sign a contract with it”, a source in Rosatomflot says to Izvestia. “We are not going to increase the price of the contract”.
Two of Russia’s existing icebreakers, «Taymyr» (1989) and “Vaygach” (1990) were built by the Finnish company Wärtsilä.
