Arkon Shipping of Germany has teamed up with a number of compatriot firms to form Arkon Allied Container (AAC), a new chartering joint venture. The partners are the shipowners Jüngerhans, Wessels, HS Schiffahrt, Nordic and Jebsen Shipping Partners, as well as the chartering specialists Ole Gabs and Wolfgang Klodwig. The objective of AAC is to concentrate the shareholders’ container feeder vessels into one large fleet consisting of over 90 container vessels with capacities of up to 4,350 TEU. AAC officially launched its business at the beginning of August.

China Ocean Shipping Company’s (COSCO) newest ship, the Cosco Shipping Libra (above), and the world’s largest container ship at that time, departed from the Port of Singapore for Europe on 6th August on her maiden voyage. The 400m long and 22.5 knot ship has a beam of 58.6m and a maximum draught of 16m. Approximately 90% of the ship’s components were made domestically, showcasing China’s shipbuilding capacity. During the maiden voyage the ship is carrying 16,586 standard containers of goods sold to European countries. The maiden voyage began on 20th July from Tianjin in China and continued from Singapore to the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal, Piraeus, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp and back to Rotterdam once again before heading home.

CMA CGM commenced a new service, the LYDIA feeder, on 2nd August linking Rouen to Le Havre on a weekly basis. The service is dedicated exclusively to cargo from Rouen to West Africa and serves Le Havre with connections on the direct services EURAF 1 and EURAF 5. A steel cutting ceremony took place at the Hudong Zhonghua Shipyard in China at the end of July for the hulls of the first two ships of CMA CGM’s order for nine 22,500 TEU capacity LNG-powered ULCVs, featuring a potentially game-changing bow design. Alongside similar ULCVs being constructed for MSC in South Korea, these new giants will be the largest containerships afloat, and the first to extend to 24 containers across the weather deck. The CMA CGM ships will also be the first constructed with a “bulbless bow”, as the container line commits its future to slow-steaming. A protruding bulb shape at the bow has been a feature of containerships for decades, but the new design could become the norm on such ships where lower unit costs have triumphed over fast transit times. The bulbous bow works by creating an artificial wave, modifying the water flow around the hull, which reduces drag and increases speed and fuel efficiency. Studies have put the fuel efficiency gain at up to 15% at near full speed. However, the advantages of a bulbous bow containership have waned with the advent of slow steaming in the past decade, causing the fuel efficiency percentage gain to drop significantly. Ships sailing lightly loaded also see little or no benefit from a bulbous bow. This has prompted the retrofitting of replacement bows, designed specifically to be more efficient at slower speeds. Each vessel measures 400m in length, 61.3m in breadth and 33.5m in depth and has a deadweight of 220,000dwt.

The 217,673gt/2018 built CMA CGM Antoine de Saint Exupery was christened by Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of Economy and Finance, with Elisabeth Borne, Transport Minister, at Le Havre on 6th September. The 400m long, 59m beam and 20,656 TEU capacity ship is named after the French pilot and writer of the famous book The Little Prince. The vessel is deployed on the FAL1 service between Asia and Northern Europe.

DP World of Dubai is to acquire the Unifeeder Group A/S, the largest Pan-European feeder and shortsea operator. The agreemNews from around the world from Maersk Tankers, Siem Shipping, Stena Bulk and moreent was signed on 7th August to acquire 100% of Unifeeder for EUR 660m from the company’s majority owner, Nordic Capital Fund VIII, and certain minority shareholders. With the acquisition, DP World expects to enhance its presence in the global supply chain and broaden its product offering with a view to ultimately reducing inefficiencies and improve the competitiveness of global trade. Purchased by Nordic Capital Fund VIII five years ago and based in Aarhus, Denmark, Unifeeder operates approximately 60 short-term chartered vessels, carrying around 3.2 million TEUs and performing some 12,000 port calls annually.

Evergreen Group of Taiwan celebrated its 50th anniversary on 1st September. The group, founded by Dr Chang Yung-Fa, owns Eva Air and Evergreen Line, the world’s seventh largest container carrier. The anniversary was celebrated at the Chang Yung-Fa Foundation, home of the charity set up by the Evergreen founder who passed away in January 2016 aged 88.

Hyundai Merchant Marine of South Korea is rebranding itself to HMM as it attempts to revive its position in the container market. HMM has also chartered the 54,809gt/2005 built and 5,042 TEU capacity Pamina (above) from Diana Containerships and she joined the fleet from 24th August for 8-12 months. The ship concluded a charter to OOCL prior to moving to HMM.

Intermarine’s 7,498gt/2018 built Industrial Courage (above), the new workhorse of the company’s Americas Liner Services, made her maiden call to Cartagena, Colombia, in late August. The newly delivered ship and her upcoming sisters were designed to service restricted ports in the Americas and beyond. Sister vessel Industrial Constant a few weeks prior, while the Industrial Confidence was delivered in the last week of September. Finally, the Industrial Color is expected for delivery before the end of 2018.

Maersk Line is sending a containership through the Northern Sea Route as part of a test run aimed at collecting scientific data. The route is becoming ever more inviting to the shipping industry, especially to the oil and gas sector, as it is much shorter than the Suez Canal. The trial passage departed from Vladivostok on 23rd August bound for the Northern Sea Route (NSR) from East to West and was due to pass through the Bering strait on or around 1st September 2018 with an arrival in St. Petersburg by the end of September. The vessel used is the 34,882gt/2018 built Venta Maersk, one of the new ice class container vessels of 3,600 TEU capacity. The plans were revealed on the back of a new transit record for the NSR achieved by the 128,806gt/2016 built Christophe de Margerie, an icebreaking LNG carrier owned and operated by Russian shipping company Sovcomflot. The latter vessel covered the distance of 2,360 nautical miles eastward, from the port of Sabetta (Yamal Peninsula) to Cape Dezhnev (the Bering Strait), in just seven days and 17 hours during July.

The Danish company has claimed that it had set a world record for the highest-ever load of containers carried on a single ship. The second-generation Triple-E vessel, the 214,286gt/2018 built Mumbai Maersk (above) departed from Tanjung Pelepas Port in Malaysia on 18th/19th August bound for Europe with a load of 19,038 TEU. According to Maersk, the world record load of 19,038 surpasses that set by the 194,849gt/2014 built Madison Maersk (18,215 TEU) in 2015.

MSC’s 94,469gt/2016 built and 9,411 TEU capacity MSC Chloe reportedly lost 13 containers while sailing between Port Elizabeth and Durban, South Africa and 22 nautical miles off Durban on the evening of 7th August. A further 25 containers were damaged

Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) will continue to operate independently, despite being taken over by Chinese state-owned container line COSCO. The latter’s purchase of OOCL, which has helped make it the third biggest container line in the world, was given final approval by US Homeland Security in July 2018. The company has tripled its market share in three years, and in that time has overtaken CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd and Evergreen in addition to this, it has also increased its TEU capacity by 68%. OOCL became the latest carrier to divert services away from Felixstowe due to delays when its Northern Europe-Turkey (NET) service called at Southampton on 25th August. The first of the services that diverted temporarily to other ports, the jointly-operated Seago, Hamburg Sud and CMA CGM Levant service, returned to Felixstowe on 23rd August with the port discussing a return to normality with other affected clients. MSC then diverted one of its services away from Felixstowe, the IPAK, in favour of London Gateway. The 95,390gt/2013 built MSC Athos was the affected vessel, arriving on the Thames on 9th September. CMA CGM then relocated its Epic 1 rotation, which connects Northern Europe with the Indian subcontinent, to London Gateway until the issues at Felixstowe, ongoing for over two months when September arrived, have been resolved.

Pasha Hawaii has awarded MAN Energy Solutions a contract to provide the propulsion systems for two new LNG fuelled containership newbuildings, which will join the U.S. Jones Act carrier’s fleet.

Each system will comprise a 7S80ME-GI Mk 9.5 main engine, three MAN 6L35/44DF generator sets and a MAN Alpha FPP propeller system. The 2,525 TEU capacity vessels will be constructed at Keppel AmFELS yard in Brownsville, Texas to Keppel’s proprietary design. Doosan Engine will build the main engines in Korea, which will meet Tier III emission standards by use of an Exhaust Gas Recirculation system. Similarly, MAN Diesel & Turbo’s Augsburg works will build the auxiliary engines which will meet Tier III with the aid of a Selective Catalytic Reduction system. Engine delivery is scheduled for 2019 with the two vessels, respectively, due for launch in 2020. Pasha Hawaii is an independent operating subsidiary of The Pasha Group based in Honolulu, Hawaii and provides shipping services between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland.

Unifeeder launched a direct service connecting Antwerp and Dunkerque with Teesport and Grangemouth on 15th August. The new connection is an addition to Unifeeder’s other services linking Rotterdam with the ports of Felixstowe, Immingham, Teesport, South Shields and Grangemouth.

Vard Holdings Limited has secured a contract to construct an autonomous and electric-driven container vessel for Norwegian chemical company YARA. The world’s first such vessel, to be named Yara Birkeland (above), will be delivered from Vard in Brevik in early 2020. After delivery, the 80m long/15m beam and 120 TEU capacity vessel will gradually move from manned operations to fully autonomous operations by 2022. She will operate in Norway, in a cargo transit between Yara’s plant in Porsgrunn to ports in Brevik and Larvik.

Yang Ming has approved the construction of ten 2,800-TEU capacity containerships, which will be deployed on the intra-Asia market. The deal was announced on 15th August with the CSBC Corporation Shipyard in Taiwan. In addition, there are five 14,000-TEU capacity chartered vessels scheduled for delivery from the fourth quarter of 2018, plus ten chartered 12,000 TEU capacity vessels that will be delivered in 2020 and 2021. Yang Ming has been battling financially but remains an active member of THE Alliance, which also consists of Hapag-Lloyd and Ocean Network Express, the container shipping joint venture between K Line, NYK and MOL.