Image Credits: USC Russia has started building the first cargo ship based on a new common ship design that will be used for a series of river-sea vessels. The Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard in Nizhny Novgorod started cutting steel for the lead KSD1 dry cargo ship on September 28. The ship is the first Russian vessel to be built using “Platform No. 1”, developed by the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) and its design bureaus. USC Chief Executive Andrey Puchkov said the ship is due to be completed in 2027. USC already has firm orders for 10 ships based on the platform and an option for another 75. The platform is not limited to dry cargo ships. USC plans to use it for several types of river-sea vessels, including tankers, container ships and bulk carriers. The main idea is to use the same basic design, equipment and technical solutions across different types of ships. USC said this can make it easier to build ships in series and give shipyards a better idea of the time and cost involved. “Platform No. 1 gives us the opportunity to build serial construction on a fundamentally new basis,” Puchkov said at the steel-cutting ceremony. He said USC is developing common technical solutions for a group of ships while also taking into account what each shipyard can produce. The ceremony was attended by Puchkov, Nizhny Novgorod Region First Deputy Governor Egor Polyakov and Sergey Lyashenko, general director of USC’s Krasnoye Sormovo. USC said the tanker and dry cargo ship versions can share up to 60% of their design. The company estimates that the platform could reduce the cost of building a ship by more than 20%. It could also cut the number of unique components by 20% and reduce construction time by up to 30%. KSD1 ship details Platform No. 1 is designed for ships that can travel on inland waterways and at sea. The design is 141 metres long and 16.9 metres wide. Its draught is 3.6 metres when operating on rivers and 4.6 metres at sea. Lyashenko put the price of the KSD1 ship a