Aurora’s expansion plan

AURORA Expeditions is mulling adding another purpose-built expedition ship to its fleet, with Managing Director Robert Halfpenny confirming the line has the option for a third newbuild.

The company would make a decision within the next 12 months and the vessel would likely come into operation in Oct 2022, Halfpenny told TD.

The line has undergone a rapid expansion, shifting from chartering polar ships to purposebuilt newbuilds, with the launch of the first vessel in the series, Greg

Mortimer, late last year (TD 01 Nov 2019) to be followed by Sylvia

Earle in Oct 2021 (TD 07 Jan). “There’s obviously a demand for this kind of product,” Halfpenny said, but said he doesn’t see Aurora Expeditions ever being a large operator.

“[Three ships is] probably where we would have to stop,” he said.

“When you start getting past three ships for our model, where you start struggling is repositioning the ships,” he explained.

“We can’t really do repositioning voyages because that’s not in the core principles of Aurora.

“We go to designated destinations where we do the type of travel and exploration that we do so we have to do deadheads between those destinations,” Halfpenny said.

The cruise line does offer some destinations in between the poles, with a new itinerary for Ireland released in the 2021/22 program last week (TD 14 Jan).

“In between there’s a lot of places to go but there’s a lot of sea in between them and our people don’t particularly go on the ship for sea days,” he said.