The masts on Andrey’s new yacht is taller than hotel Arktika
Andrey Melnichenko owns the port of Murmansk and EuroChem’s mining subsidiary on the Kola Peninsula.
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She is the world’s largest sailing yacht ever built. It is still unknown wether her owner ever will make port call to Murmansk, the Arctic port were he is majority shareholder.
Billionaire Andrey Melnichenko is one of Russia’s richest men. Forbes ranks him to be the 137th richest people in the world with an estimated personal wealth of $12 billion.
His new yacht, named «Sailing Yacht A» is 468-feet long. Tuesday morning the vessel made port call to Kristiansand in Norway on her maiden cross-ocean test-voyage from the yard in Kiel, Germany.
The regional newspaper Fedrelandsvennen reports that Andrey Melnichenko paid €417 million for the yacht.
In case you wonder; yes there is a swimming pool on one deck, a garage for cars, smaller boats, a submarine, a helicopter pad and an underwater observation room. Daily Mail has posted a series of photos of the mega-yacht.
In Britain, the newspaper MailOnline compares the three mammoth masts with Big Ben.
For us in the north, and since Andrey Melnichenko has made much of his cash from the Kola Peninsula, it is better to compare the masts with something more familiar; Hotel Arktika - the tallest building in Murmansk.
The 19-floor Hotel Arktika is 72 meters, 19 meter shorter than the 91 meter tall mid-mast on board «Sailing Yacht A». By the way; the yacht itself boasts eight floors.
Together, the eight decks and the tallest mast, the vessel is three times higher than Alosha, the WWII monument on the hill just outside Murmansk city ventre. The 35,5 meter tall statue is the highest in northern Russia.
Big money from Kovdor
And if you want to know, the sail plan covers 3,747 square meters, according to Wikipedia that has posted a list of the world’s largest mega-yachts.
On the Kola Peninsula, Andrey Melnichenko owns EuroChem’s mining and metallurgy subsidiary Kovdorskiy GOK. Being one of the top-ten agrochemical companies globally by nutrient capacity, big money comes from producing nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers. In Kovdor, the company also mines iron ore.
Andrey Melnichenko’s assets also includes Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK), the leading coal producer in Russia and owner of 75% of the shares in Murmansk Commercial Sea Port, as reported by the Barents Observer in January.
Figures from the Association of Commercial Sea Ports show that overall goods volume in the first eleven months of 2016 had a significant increase of 48% compared with the same period in 2015. That volume includes the other port companies operating along the east side of the Kola Bay, like Norilsk-Nickel and Murmansk Fish Port.
