Eco Friendly Passenger Ferry to be Equipped with Kone Elevators

The leading elevator and escalator company KONE will supply elevators for Aurora Botnia, a new passenger  ferry being built at the Rauma Marine Constructions shipyard in Finland. With three eco-efficient KONE  MonoSpace® elevators, KONE will ease the flow of passengers and goods on board.  

Scheduled for completion in 2021, Aurora Botnia is a new Wasaline ferry that will operate the route  between Vaasa, Finland and Umeå, Sweden. The ferry will accommodate 800 passengers and it will have a  freight capacity of 1,500 lane meters. The most environmentally friendly passenger ferry currently under  construction, Aurora Botnia will run on both liquefied natural gas and biogas. 

“We can see in all parts of the world that sustainability is becoming increasingly important for our  customers. We highly appreciate this opportunity to help Wasaline to be even more sustainable by  delivering our energy efficient people flow solutions,” says Timo Pakarinen, Head of Marine Business at KONE. 

”KONE was a natural choice for us, as the quality of their solutions is good. Of course,  it is a plus that they are a Finnish company,” says Peter Ståhlberg, Managing Director  of Wasaline. 

KONE will ease the flow of people and goods on Aurora Botnia with two KONE MonoSpace® passenger elevators and one KONE MonoSpace® service elevator. The space-saving KONE MonoSpace® does not need a machine room, so it saves construction costs and reduces weight, and gives naval architects greater design flexibility. The elevator provides energy-efficient vertical transport in a compact space, and since there is no need for a machine room, it can even serve the topmost deck or allow for more free space on the bridge deck. 

The KONE elevators are designed and built for the tough demands of marine installations, and to meet today’s sustainability benchmarks. They are powered by  KONE EcoDisc®, a compact and gearless technology that lowers energy consumption,  reduces demands on space, and improves reliability. It is designed for a long operational lifespan and consumes significantly less energy than a comparable geared  hoisting machine. KONE is a pioneer in developing regenerative systems that recover elevators’ braking energy that would otherwise be lost as heat. These solutions transfer up to 90% of this energy back to the network where it can be used immediately to power lighting, for example.