Australian company wins contract to design “hydrogen ready” high speed ferry

An Australian shipbuilding and defence contractor has won a roughly $270 million contract to design of a whopping 130-metre, “hydrogen-ready” high-speed passenger ferry for Swedish ferry line Gotlandsbolaget, which takes passengers between the Swedish island of Gotland and the mainland.

The new design is part of Gotlandsbolaget’s Horizon X program, which aims to make this high-traffic route more sustainable, with several thousand people travelling the route per day in the summer months.

The ferry, the Horizon X, will have capacity for 1,650 passengers and 450 cars, and will be able to travel at a speed of up to 35 knots. It would be the largest vessel ever built by Austal.

Austal says the ferry will begin construction at its Philippines shipyard in early 2026, with construction scheduled to complete in mid-2028.

The ship will also have a specially-designed propulsion system arrangement that repurposes exhaust from the engine to help propel the vessel, in theory reducing its emissions.

The company says the ship will also be built using “green aluminium,” further boosting its sustainability credentials, though it does not specify exactly how green that aluminium would be, and whether those green credentials would apply to the production and refinery processes, or whether offsets would be used.

It’s also not yet clear what exactly is meant by “hydrogen ready” or what colour that hydrogen might be. The Gotlandsboget website notes that the engine will have a “multi-fuel solution”, which it says will allow the ferry to run on “various other fossil-free fuels”, though it’s not made clear what these may be.

A number of hydrogen-fuelled boats are already traversing the world’s waters, including the Sea Change ferry in San Francisco that can lug 70 passengers along a popular route.

Austal could not be reached for comment at time of publication.