Carnival Corporation has revealed that its Italian subsidiary Costa Crociere has sold its oldest cruisehip, the 53,000-gt Costa neoClassica (built 1991).
The ship will be handed over to its new owner in March 2018.
No details were given on how much the ship was sold for, nor has the identity of the buyer been revealed.
The sale is prompting a reshuffle of the Costa fleet as Costa neoClassica’s Mediterranean cruises scheduled for the summer of 2018 will be taken over by its sistership, the 56,700-gt Costa neoRomantica (built 1993), which is currently operating out of Japan.
In addition, Costa has also revealed that it will be withdrawing the 75,200-gt Costa Victoria (built 1996) from the Chinese market next year.
These two ships, now the oldest in the Costa fleet, are likely to be sold off in the future as Costa prepares to take delivery of a pair of 135,000-gt and a pair of 183,200-gt cruiseship newbuildings between 2019 and 2021. Two of these have been earmarked for the Chinese market.
In Carnival Corp’s recent second quarter earnings, president and CEO Arnold Donald indicated that the company was planning to prune an average of one to two of its older ships per year from its fleet.
