vtsnowedin wrote:Well ships can certainly be built to an ice proof standard if ice breaker assistance is available. The question is how much extra does the heavier construction and the ice breaker service cost and will that out weigh the time and fuel savings apposed to going by the Suez canal? I could see convoys of ships in line following a big ice breaker providing backup assistance to each other. I would not think winter passages will ever be desirable just from the fact the whole voyage will be conducted in the dark.
It will be interesting to see if the Russians can build this up to 1000 full crossings per summer.
According to this pdf https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Est ... _264121577
the construction premium for building an ice capable merchant ship ranges from 10% to 120%
It looks like a good average would be 30-35% which is not much amortized over a 40 year service life. Labor is the largest cost for shipping companies and cutting as much as 40% off of transit time can add up to big savings in a short time frame. I suspect that even if the cost was 120% on construction if you could cut labor costs even 20% every journey it wouldn't take many years to pay off the difference. After that the shorter trip/lower labor costs would be all profits.