Ville de Bordeaux

The Ville de Bordeaux is a ship carrier designed to transport the elements of the Airbus A380.

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 keeping open their diverse existing European factory infrastructure, or finding a way of transporting the components to final assembly plant in Toulouse. Airbus choose to keep the plants diversified, using sea and road transport, with the production facilities and supply chain 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 ferry. She was built in Nanjing, China using the Jinling shipyard. The Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit, a system of new wider roads, waterways and barges was also developed to deliver the A380 parts.

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