20. April 2017

FREMM Luigi Rizzo - Delivery to the Italian Navy

The sixth Italian FREMM frigate “Luigi Rizzo” was delivered on 20th April 2017 by OCCAR to the Italian Navy. The ceremony at the Muggiano shipyard (La Spezia) was attended by the OCCAR Director, the OCCAR FREMM Programme Manager, Senior Italian Navy Officers, representatives of the French procurement agency DGA, by the Orizzonte Sistemi Navali CEO and senior representatives from Fincantieri and Leonardo companies.

The ship is named after one of the greatest Italian Navy heroes who sunk a Battleship by means of a torpedo boat during the first World War.

Speech by OCCAR Director Arturo Alfonso Meiriño

Delivery of Luigi Rizzo is an outstanding result obtained thanks to the excellent working relationship between Industry, the Italian Navy and the OCCAR-EA FREMM Programme Division. Like FREMM Alpino in September 2016, the Luigi Rizzo was delivered without any limitations. As mentioned in his speech by the Navy Commander in Chief, this allows the ship to be immediately deployed by the Navy on operations, following a training period for the crew. 

The successful cooperation was referred to by a number of the speakers, including the OCCAR Director Arturo Alfonso Meiriño, who outlined a number of elements which had helped to achieve this success: the deep commitment by the industrial workforce, the Orizzonte Sistemi Navali structured and expert organisation and finally OCCAR’s best practice based management effectiveness.

Luigi Rizzo (foreground) and Amerigo Vespucci

Prior to the handover ceremony, on 19th April, Italian Ship (ITS) Rizzo performed a demonstration at sea of some of its operational capabilities. In addition, taking advantage of the departure of Italian training ship Amerigo Vespucci on its 2017 sea-training campaign, a rendezvous had been set up, in the Gulf of Poets (La Spezia), to partner the oldest and the youngest ships of the Italian Navy.

Luigi Rizzo and Amerigo Vespucci

ITS Rizzo is the second General Purpose (GP) configuration FREMM frigate (the four Submarine Warfare version warships have already been delivered) after the “Carlo Bergamini”, delivered in 2012. The seventh ship is in the outfitting phase (delivery foreseen in April 2018) and the following ships (all of them in the construction phase) will be delivered at the rate of one per year up to April 2021. Previously delivered ships are managed by OCCAR in their “In Service Support” phase.

OCCAR Director Arturo Alfonso Meiriño and the FREMM Programme Division