On 16 December 2010 Arctech Helsinki Shipyard received its first order when a contract for two icebreaking platform supply vessels similar to the SCF Sakhalin, worth US$100 million per ship, was signed with Sovcomflot.
The Grand Aniva was featured on Series 3 of the BBC program Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections.
The ship is named after Timofey Guzhenko (1918–2008), the USSR Minister of Merchant Marine in 1970–1986 and one of the founders of the Sovcomflot Group.