Icebreaking

Winter navigation enabling the reliable transport requirements of international trade, safeguarding the critical supply routes in the country, is ensured by Arctia.

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Regular and safe marine traffic

Our icebreaking expertise is based on special-purpose vessels and highly competent crews with years of experience in winter navigation. Our goal is to provide even better icebreaking services, minimizing delays in transport and guarantee safety in the most demanding circumstances.

6 icebreakers

2 multipurpose icebreakers

World-class icebreaking expertise

Over 30 years of experience

icebreaking professionals

assistance at 2024

mileage at 2024

towed at 2024

Icebreaking services secure the year-round operation in Finnish society

For over 140 years, winter navigation services have secured Finland’s marine export and import. Together with the interest groups, Arctia safeguards the functionality of society and develops winter navigation to meet its future needs.

The needs of individual vessels are taken into account as part of the entire icebreaking and winter navigation operations. Our goal is to ensure the smoothest possible operations for all vessel traffic. Well-functioning winter navigation is enabled with thorough overall planning and prioritized assistance tasks.

Each icebreaking assistance task is different

Icebreaking services are free of charge to merchant vessels that comply with the regulations and capacity requirements and are operating to Finnish ports. Shipping companies pay fairway dues to the Finnish State for their vessels arriving to Finland’s ports. The fairway dues depend on vessel size and the number of annual visits. Collected fairway dues are used e.g. for funding icebreaking services.

The animation below describes the icebreaking process on a general level. Each assistance task is different, and decisions on the execution of tasks are made case-by-case.