ACL has christened the 100,430gt/2015 built G4 Con-Ro vessel Atlantic Star (above) in the Helen Delich Bentley Port at Baltimore’s Dundalk Marine Terminal. The vessel is registered in the United Kingdom and is one of five ships in the carrier’s new fleet. The ship has a container capacity of 3,800 TEU with 28,900sqm of Ro-Ro space and a car capacity of over 1,300 vehicles. The deck clear heights are up to 7.4m.

CMA CGM introduced the new Onne Feeder service from 8th October to connect the West African ports of Kribi, Port Gentil, Onne and Takoradi. The Onne Feeder will connect with the EURAF 4 service at the transhipment hub of Kribi on a fortnightly basis. The first ship to operate the service was the 18,334gt/2005 built and 1,740 TEU capacity Konrad Schulte (above).

COSCO’s Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding in Shanghai completed 7-days of sea trials on 7th September for the new 194,864gt/20,000TEU container ship Cosco Shipping Sagittarius (above) built for the China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco). The vessel is the third such ship delivered by Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding to Cosco this year. She reached 22.66 knots during speed tests, exceeding the 22.5-knot speed requirement for the design. The ship then underwent final commissioning work and was expected to be named and delivered in mid-October.

Deugro Group of Germany has added a further two F-500 Eco Trader newbuildings to the previous duo, all destined for dship Carriers. The vessels will be delivered during the latter half of 2019 by the Taizhou Sanfu Shipyard in China. The delivery of the first two vessels is scheduled for January and March 2019. The F-500 vessel type belongs to the new generation of economic multi-purpose vessels, which have been specially developed to reduce fuel consumption and to increase stowage flexibility.

Hapag-Lloyd has christened its 15,000 TEU capacity ship Al Jmeliyah in Rotterdam on 11th September. The ULCV, which has ten sister vessels, was built in 2016 for the United Arab Shipping Company (UASC). UASC merged with Hapag-Lloyd in May 2017. The 153,418gt/2017 built Al Jmeliyah is 385.5m long with a 51m beam and is one of Hapag-Lloyd’s 17 so-called LNG-ready ships and was manufactured by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries in South Korea. The Al Jmeliyah operates in the FE4 service, the Far East 4 loop. When departing from Rotterdam, she sails to Hamburg, Antwerp, Southampton, Yantian, Shanghai, Busan, Ningbo, and Shanghai before heading back to Europe. The previous christening ceremony for a Hapag-Lloyd ship in Rotterdam was the 4,890 TEU capacity Rotterdam Express in 2000.

Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) of South Korea confirmed on 28th September that it had placed orders for the construction of 20 large containerships worth $2.84 billion. The orders are distributed among South Korea’s ‘Big Three’ shipbuilders: Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME). Twelve vessels are anticipated to be around 23,000 TEU capacity and eight will be 14,000 TEU, with DSME and Samsung Heavy selected to construct the 23,000 TEU vessels. Samsung Heavy Industries has confirmed that it will be building five vessels for HMM, leaving DSME building the remaining eight. Hyundai Heavy Industries will construct all eight of the 14,000 TEU ships. Delivery of all 20 newbuilds is expected by June 2021.

Maersk Line’s 214,286gt/2018 built Mumbai Maersk arrived at APMT’s Maasvlakte 2 with her record breaking 19,038 TEU in a single shipment on 5th September. The 399m long vessel became the first container vessel carrying over 19,000 TEU of cargo in one load. The 34,882gt/2018 built and 3,600 TEU capacity ice-class ship Venta Maersk has navigated through the Northern Sea Route for the first time. The ship departed from Vladivostok on 23rd August and passed through Bering Strait around 6th September. The Venta Maersk is the world’s first commercial containership to venture through the route, as the lane was reserved for tankers and most recently passenger ships. Maersk decided to use ultra-low sulphur fuel (ULSFO) for the trial. Global Ship Lease has signed a time charter contract with Maersk Line for the 89,097gt/2004-built, 8,063 TEU capacity containership OOCL Ningbo. The ship has been renamed GSL Ningbo, following redelivery by OOCL on 17th September 2018. The vessel was chartered from 21st September for a period of between 2 and 12 months, with a subsequent option for an additional 12-month extension. GSL has also agreed an extension of its charter with CMA CGM for the 26,061gt/2002-built, 2,207 TEU containership Julie Delmas, which has been renamed GSL Julie, commencing 26th October to 20th March 2019. On 24th September Maersk Line confirmed that its three intra-regional brands, MCC Transport, Seago and Sealand, would be combined into one operating unit. This new entity will be branded Sealand – A Maersk Company.

MSC’s 23,000 TEU capacity ULCVs are being equipped with the world’s largest ship propeller, weighing 110 tonnes. The first one of eleven was loaded onto the 52,581gt/2008 built containership Hyundai Supreme in the Port of Hamburg on 16th September. The propeller was built by Mecklenburger Metallguss GmbH (MMG) and transported from the production facility in Waren an der Müritz in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to Hamburg. Hamburg’s 200t capacity floating crane loaded the propeller onto the 300m long containership for onward shipment to the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering shipyard, where the 23,000 TEU newbuilds, set to become the biggest containerships in the world, are taking shape. The mega-ships will be powered by MAN’s G95ME-C9.5 main engines and the vessels will be delivered from 2019 to 15th March 2020.

Navios Maritime Containers of Monaco took delivery of the 41,358gt/2009 built and 4,563 TEU capacity Navios Miami on 12th September.

Ocean Network Express Pte. Ltd. (ONE) announced the delivery of the 145,647gt/2018 built and 14,000 TEU capacity ONE Aquila from the Kure Shipyard of Japan Marine United Corporation at the beginning of September. The newbuild phased into THE Alliance’s Asia to North America (West Coast) PN3 service with a port rotation of Hong Kong, Yantian, Ningbo, Shanghai, Pusan, Prince Rupert, Vancouver, Seattle, Pusan, Kwangyang, and Hong Kong. On 26th September the company announced with Hapag-Lloyd and Yang Ming that the Mediterranean-U.S. East Coast service AL6 (Atlantic 6) was to be enhanced in a strategic co-operation with CMA-CGM, COSCO and OOCL. The improved service is consolidating the AL6 service (operated by Ocean Network Express, Hapag-Lloyd, and Yang Ming), and the Amerigo service (operated by COSCO, CMA-CGM, OOCL) into one larger loop with a deployment of six 8,000-TEU vessels (three by HapagLloyd, Ocean Network Express, and Yang Ming and the remaining by CMA-CGM and OOCL). The newly designed port rotation for the service will be La Spezia-Genoa-Fos-Barcelona-Valencia-New York-Norfolk-Savannah-Miami-Algeciras-La Spezia. Livorno will no longer be covered by the AL6 but ONE, Hapag-Lloyd, and Yang Ming will call here via a revised AL7 service, operated by ZIM, as part of the continuing co-operation between THE Alliance and ZIM. The partnership with CMA-CGM, COSCO and OOCL is scheduled to begin in December 2018 and this will change the member companies of THE Alliance.

OOCL introduced the new China-Ho Chi Minh Service (CHL) and China-Laem Chabang Service (CHL4) effective from 12th//14th October respectively with both initial sailings starting in Dalian, China. By replacing the current CHL service and splitting it into two new ones, transit times for Ho Chi Minh exports and Laem Chabang imports on the respective routes will be shortened. The new CHL and CHL4 port rotations will be as follows: CHL: Dalian-Xingang-Qingdao-Hong Kong-Shekou-Ho Chi Minh-Hong Kong-Shekou-Inchon-Dalian. CHL4: Dalian-Xingang-Qingdao-Hong Kong-Shekou-Laem Chabang-Hong Kong-Xiamen-Inchon-Dalian. In December OOCL is upgrading the Atlantic Mediterranean Express Service (ATM1) by the deployment of a larger fleet of vessels with 8,500 TEU capacity. The revised port rotation will be: La Spezia-Genoa-Fos-Barcelona-Valencia-New York-Norfolk-Savannah-Miami-Algeciras-La Spezia.

SM Lines of South Korea has forged a strategic alliance with state-owned shipping firm Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) in an effort to secure a stable foothold in Southeast Asia’s fast-growing shipping logistics market. The partners will share cargo and expand business co-operation under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in Hanoi on 10th September. Vinalines will dispatch a ship to support SM Lines on a route covering South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.

Samskip of Rotterdam is restructuring the multi-purpose cargo and reefer services connecting North Sea and Baltic ports to Norway operated by subsidiary Nor Lines. Effective 1st October, 2018, the changes will meet rising demand for reefer and project cargo services southbound and increase capacity for conventional and project cargoes northbound along the Norwegian coast and beyond to Murmansk. The two existing multi-purpose service loops increase to three with the pool of 3 ships increased to 4. The combined service will be split, with two pairs of ships operating separate schedules. One pair will connect northern Norway with German and Dutch ports, focusing on frozen fish/project cargoes southbound and palletised/project cargoes northbound. The other pair of ships will serve importers and exporters in Danish and Polish ports, connecting with Western Norway in the Fredrikstad-Tromsø range, calling weekly northbound and prioritizing southbound calls for reefer/project cargo volumes. Meanwhile, the separate Nor Lines’ multipurpose liner service connecting the Netherlands to Western, Mid and Northern Norway weekly will add a call at the Dutch port of Velsen. This operation is maintained by the 9,132gt/2015 built LNG-powered vessels Kvitbjørn and Kvitnos, each offering 1,500 lanemetres of Ro-Ro capacity, 122 TEU container capacity, 1,500t of reefer space and heavylift crane capability.

Yang Ming’s new 14,000 TEU capacity YM Wellbeing (above) was named at Japan’s Imabari Shipbuilding on 18th September. The vessel is the first from the batch of five containerships for Yang Ming Marine chartered from Shoei Kisen Kaisha, the ship owning arm of Imabari. The 366.44m long/51.20m beam YM Wellbeing is the 16th 14,000 TEU capacity (14,220 nominal capacity) vessel to join Yang Ming’s global container fleet. The new ship was deployed in THE Alliance’s MD2 service as of 5th October calling at Pusan-Qingdao-Ningbo-Shanghai-Kaohsiung-Shekou-Singapore-Piraeus-La Spezia-Genoa-Fos Sur Mer-Piraeus-Singapore-Hong Kong-Pusan.