Scenic Luxury Cruises has announced that the first sailing date for Scenic Eclipse has been pushed back for a third time.

The vessel will now, hopefully, depart on its first voyage on August 15th.

“We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience these delays to the launch of Scenic Eclipse have caused our guests.

“As a company we have done everything possible to complete the ship within the time limits that were set previously, but a series of events that are outside our control have put us in a position where we must delay,” stated a company spokesperson.

Ongoing financial challenges faced by the Uljanik Shipyard, where the Scenic Eclipse is being built, have caused a range of problems, Scenic said.

Shipyard workers have not been paid full salaries since August, which has led to strikes and manpower shortages as well as several other shipyard disruptions, resulting in months of lost production.

To keep the Scenic Eclipse build moving as quickly as possible in these challenging circumstances the company expanded their team within the shipyard by employing Cruise Ship specialists from Finland, Italy, the UK and Norway.

The expanded Scenic team took over the lead role in completing the ship with in excess of 115 directly-employed specialists in cooperation with the shipyard’s remaining management team and more than 500 subcontractors.

In what Scenic is branding a “very positive development for the Scenic Eclipse build and the Uljanik Group”, a consortium comprised of the Croatian DIV group and Italian Shipyard Fincantieri was confirmed as the new owner of Uljanik earlier this month.

Accordingly, Scenic is confident that these new owners will bring stability and focus to current and future ship builds.

The last delay to the build was confirmed in November.