The ''Ville de Bordeaux'' is a ship carrier designed to transport the elements of the

Airbus A380 The Airbus A380 is a large wide-body airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was annou ...

Ville de Bordeaux_IMO 9270842_R_Hamburg_22-02-2021 (1)

A380 production

The origin of Airbus as a European holding company for a series of country-based existing aerospace manufacturers resulted in a geographically diversified structure with plants in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Transportation of components and sub-structures of existing Airbus models was facilitated by air, using the specially developed A300-600ST ''Beluga'' aircraft. As the major components and sub-assembly structures of the A380 were too big for the A300-600ST, Airbus were forced to choose between consolidating their diverse existing European factory infrastructure, or finding a way of transporting the components to a final assembly plant in

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

. Airbus choose to keep the plants diversified, using sea and road transport, with the production facilities and

supply chain In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, acti ...

scaled for a production rate of four A380s per month.

Design

Conceived by Deltamarin, ''Ville de Bordeaux'' was designed as a

Roll-on/roll-off Roll-on/roll-off (RORO or ro-ro) ships are cargo ships designed to carry wheeled cargo, such as cars, motorcycles, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, buses, trailers, and railroad cars, that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels or using ...

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

. She was built in

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

using the Jinling shipyard. Built for a cost of $30million, the ship was launched in January 2004. She is the lead ship in a fleet of three

(RORO) ships leased to Airbus; the others being the '' City of Hamburg'' delivered in 2008 and the '' Ciudad de Cadiz'' delivered in 2009. Jointly owned by

Louis Dreyfus Armateurs Louis may refer to: * Louis (coin) * Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name * Louis (surname) * Louis (singer), Serbian singer * HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy See also Derived or associated terms * Lewis (d ...

of France, and

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

ship-owner Leif Höegh & Co; she is operated jointly by their subsidiary companies Fret and CETAM, on a 20+10year

lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

to Airbus. The ship started operations on June 10, 2004. In 2021 ''Ville de Bordeaux'' was fitted with a 500m² 'Seawing' - an automated

foil kite Foil kites are soft kites based on the design of the parafoil. They consist of a number of cells running fore to aft, some or all of which are open at the front to allow air to inflate the kite so it takes on an aerofoil section. Due to the amoun ...

developed by AirSeas (an Airbus subsidiary) to provide wind assistance to propulsion - and in January 2022 commenced six months of sea trials in preparation for full deployment.

Operations

Starting at the Airbus Hamburg Finkenwerder plant on the

River Elbe The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Repu ...

, the ship loads the front and rear sections of the fuselage, from where they are shipped to the United Kingdom. The wings, which are manufactured at

Filton Filton is a town and civil parish in South Gloucestershire, England, north of Bristol. Along with nearby Patchway and Bradley Stoke, Filton forms part of the Bristol urban area and has become an overflow settlement for the city. Filton Church d ...

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

and

Broughton, Flintshire Broughton ( cy, Brychdyn) is a large village in Flintshire, Wales, close to the Wales–England border, located to the west of the city of Chester, England, in the community of Broughton and Bretton. Along with the nearby village of Bretton, ...

in North

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

, are transported by

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...

Mostyn Mostyn is a village and community in Flintshire, Wales, and electoral ward lying on the estuary of the River Dee, located near the town of Holywell. It has a privately owned port that has in the past had a colliery and ironworks and was invol ...

docks, where the ship adds them to its cargo. In

Saint-Nazaire Saint-Nazaire (; ; Gallo: ''Saint-Nazère/Saint-Nazaer'') is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France, in traditional Brittany. The town has a major harbour on the right bank of the Loire estuary, near the Atlantic Ocean ...

in western France, the ship trades the fuselage sections from Hamburg for larger, assembled sections, some of which include the nose. The ship unloads in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

. Afterwards, the ship picks up the belly and tail sections by

Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA) was a Spanish aircraft manufacturer that was founded in 1923 and began manufacturing aircraft the following year. In 1999 it became a subsidiary of the EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company) ...

Cádiz Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia. Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...

in southern Spain, and delivers them to Bordeaux. From there, the A380 parts are transported by barge to Langon, and by the oversize road convoys of the

Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit The ''Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit'' is a water and road route that has been created in order to allow the transport of the outsize structural sections of the Airbus A380 airliner from their point of manufacture to Toulouse for final assembly. Th ...

from there to the assembly hall in

. After assembly, the aircraft are flown to

Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport Airbus Hamburg-Finkenwerder, also known as Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport , is an aircraft manufacturing plant and associated private airport in the Finkenwerder quarter of southwest Hamburg, Germany. The airport is an integral part of the Airbus ...

, part of the Hamburg Finkenwerder plant from which their journey started, to be furnished and painted.

References

{{commons category, IMO 9270842 Airbus Ferries of France Ships built in China