KARACHI: Antares Experience, a former Costa Cruises liner is set to end its nearly three-decade-long journey in Pakistan’s Gadani shipbreaking yard, a senior Pakistani official and the shipbreaker said on Sunday.
Built for Italy’s biggest tour operator Costa Cruises in the early 1990s, the cruise liner was bought by a Pakistani shipbreaker, New Choice Enterprises (NCE), to turn it into scrap at the shipbreaking yard in Gadani, Balochistan, some 50 kilometers away from Karachi.
“The cruise ship, which is bought by a Gadani buyer, has come for beaching,” Mahmood Moulvi, the Pakistani prime minister’s special assistant on maritime affairs, told Arab News.
“It will be beached as per the conditions of the contract,” Moulvi said, ruling out the possibility of using the cruise for a ferry services in the country.
The ship, weighing 56,800 gross tons, has 14 floors, 1,411 rooms, a seven-star hotel, shopping areas, gaming zones and three conference halls.
It is going to be scrapped due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the shipping sector.
“The condition of shipping lines in Europe is not good and they are doing away with ships,” Moulvi said. “The ship was sold at $610 per LDT (Light Displacement Tonnage).”
Ahmedullah Khan, the buyer of the vessel and owner of NCE, had requested the government to allow turning the ship into a hotel by docking it off the Karachi coast or use it for travel and tourism, saying that it was in “workable condition” for the next 10-15 years.
But the authorities turned down the idea due to the size of the vessel.
“It will take at least 10 months to dismantle the whole ship and more than 500 workers will be directly involved in the process,” Khan told Arab News, adding is the “largest cruise ever” to arrive for scrapping in Pakistan.
The dismantling of the cruise liner is expected to start next week.
Gadani is the world’s third largest shipbreaking yard after the Alang-Sosiya yard in India and the Chittagong yard in Bangladesh.
