The new multipurpose icebreaker would be designed to be capable of recovering spilled oil and chemicals in both open water and ice conditions, extinguishing shipboard fires and emergency towing of the largest merchant ships operating in the Gulf of Finland.

[4] The work group published its final report on 31 December 2003 and came to a conclusion that while the proposed vessel would definitely be needed and it would be technically possible to construct one, fulfilling the requirements of the different operators with a single ship would be difficult and, as noted before, remaining on standby during the open water season would be very expensive.

One of the proposed alternatives was the conversion of the Finnish multipurpose icebreaker Fennica, built in 1993, to a spill response vessel, but this was not pursued further.

After evaluating more economic alternatives in October 2005 the committee working on the project came to a conclusion that a new multipurpose oil recovery vessel would still be the best solution to improve spill response readiness.

Construction of the new vessel was awarded to the Finnish shipyard UKI Workboat Ltd (Uudenkaupungin Työvene Oy) and the contract, worth 48 million euro, was signed on 26 October 2007.

[11] Although Louhi can operate in relatively high seas, the recovery effort was hindered and subsequently the oil slick was broken up by the storm on 27 December 2011.

[14] As the primary mission of the new vessel is pollution prevention, the ship has an extensive array of equipment capable of detecting and recovering spilled oil and chemicals in open water, high seas and ice conditions.

The vessel has facilities for divers, a moon pool and remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs), and it can be used to lay and recover submarine communications cable which is stored in the ship's recovery tanks.

The diesel-electric azimuth thrusters, manufactured by Rolls-Royce, give the vessel excellent maneuverability at low speeds, stationkeeping and dynamic positioning capability, and a towing capacity of 600 kN (61 tf).

[3] The mechanical oil recovery equipment on board Louhi is based on the same stiff brush technology that has been proved to be effective by the previous Finnish spill response vessels.

The vessel is equipped with three different types of recovery systems developed and manufactured by Lamor, each suitable for specific weather conditions.

[3][19][20] However, as the advancing system can only be used effectively in calm seas with significant wave height below one metre, Louhi is also equipped with a special "wave damping tank", an innovation used for the first time in a Finnish recovery vessel, that can be used in combination with the aforementioned stiff brush conveyors and a shorter sweeping boom to collect oil in 2-metre (7 ft) swell.

The main recovery system consists of four large brushes controlled by individual crane arms installed on the stern deck.

In addition the vessel has two Lamor LRB-series oil recovery buckets that have large rotating brushes that resemble those of street sweepers and are used in a similar fashion.

Despite their limited recovery capacity, the brush buckets operated by the ship's cranes have been proven to be effective in ice conditions in the past, such as that of Runner 4 in 2006.