Filling ultra-large container ships

For those believing that Maersk Line’s 18,270-TEU Triple‐E class ships can actually be filled up to design capacity, says Dynamar, the carrier’s flagship Maersk McKinney Møller recently left Algeciras with 18,168 TEUs on board. “The ship was on its way to the Far East filled with many (if not mostly) empty boxes. Otherwise its deadweight (195,000 tons) would not have been sufficient to load all these boxes. The average gross weight per full TEU to the Far East from Northern Europe stands at around 14.2 tons (working out at 258,000 tons, excluding bunkers and supplies).”

Dynamar reports that Seaspan, an owner that doesn’t operate ultra-large container ships, doesn’t think ships of 18,000 to 20,000 TEUs will become the 747s of shipping, arguing that their deployment will remain restricted to a limited number of ports on the Europe-Far East run. It is convinced that they are missing the flexibility of the 10,000/14,000-teu range of container ships that have developed into the workhorses of an increasing number of liner trades.

As an analyst, Strauss also mentioned the size of the new locks in the enlarged Panama Canal: Roughly 13,000-TEU vessels will be the limit to transit the canal.

Excerpted from the Maritime Executive. Read the full article here.