Whangarei Arista & SMI win contract to outfit luxury vessel

25 March 2011

A Northland company has been awarded a contract to completely outfit a 120m luxury passenger vessel.

The vessel’s hull and superstructure is completed and is lying alongside the Arista yard in Split, Croatia. Arista Marine and sub-contractor Specialist Marine Interiors (SMI) will completely outfit the vessel, including the luxury passenger’s interior, to be SOLAS compliant.

Grant Willis, SMI CEO says: “The project will represent two years of work for up to 90 SMI staff. The project will also involve many other New Zealand suppliers subcontracting to both Arista Marine and SMI and has a significant value (in the tens of millions of euros) providing a substantial boost to New Zealand’s industry, particularly in the Northern Region.”

Willis says that the project is extremely pleased to have been supported by the New Zealand Export Credit Office (NZECO). “Without their support, this project would have been lost to Arista, SMI and New Zealand”.

The NZECO is an operational unit within the Treasury that offers financial guarantees to exporters and banks, to support commercially sound deals that the private sector lacks the capacity for. In this transaction, the NZECO is supporting a loan provided by Barclays Capital to the project’s international owner, by underwriting the loan repayments by the owner.

“In light of tightening credit and a lower risk tolerance in the global financial markets, the NZECO’s guarantee was critical in enabling an international bank to fund this project, “says Carmen Moana, Manager of the NZECO.

“We are very pleased to be supporting, in partnership with Barclays, a project that will internationally showcase the designs and skills of New Zealand companies such as Arista Marine and SMI,” Ms Moana says.

SMI will build the interior in their Whangarei factory and freight the components to Croatia for installation.

ENDS

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