Aliança: On 20th June the new 47,799gt/2014 built and 255m long container ship Vicente Pinzón belonging to the Hamburg Süd subsidiary Alianҫa was christened. Alianҫa has launched a total of six newbuildings for its cabotage services, four of which feature a slot capacity of 3,800 TEU each and two with 4,800 TEU each. All newbuildings have set new standards in the Brazilian coastal routes in terms of their capacity and environmental friendliness. 

The CMA CGM Group and the German Authority Havariekommando tested Havariekommando’s capability to tow ultralarge container vessels during an exercise held on 13th June. The vessel used for this exercise was the 175,368gt/2013 built and 16,000 TEU CMA CGM Jules Verne. During the exercise, the ship acted as a vessel in distress with the procedures culminating in the containership being towed by two Havariekommando vessels. Meanwhile the 175,688gt/2015 built and 18,000 TEU capacity CMA CGM Georg Forster visited the UK for her maiden call at Southampton on 6th July.

COSCO has sealed a series of giant containership orders on home soil in China, ordering nine 20,000 TEU ships plus four options. The ships are split between three yards with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS) building four of them, Nantong Cosco KHI Ship Engineering (NACKS) building three and Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co (DSIC) is contracted for two. 

Evergreen Group held a naming ceremony for the Ever Lovely at the end of June, the ninth of its L-type container ships to be built by CSBC Corporation in Taiwan, and the penultimate vessel in the thirty strong series. 

Grangemouth, Scotland’s largest container port saw the start of an investment scheme in June to increase the terminal’s capacity for storing containers. The port’s owner, Forth Ports Limited, is investing in significant surface upgrading works on an area of some 6,325 square metres. The investment is designed to increase the busy container terminal’s total capacity to 12,000 TEUs (the industry standard container size of twenty foot equivalent units), a 50% increase since 2005, and will deliver operational efficiencies to its landside and shipside operations. 

Hapag Lloyd announced in June that, by 2016, 24 of the largest ships in its fleet will get a new bulbous bow, and some will also be fitted with optimised propellers. This will enable the vessels to consume less fuel and produce fewer emissions. One by one, the 13,200 TEU ships in the Hamburg Express class and the 8,750 TEU vessels in the Colombo Express, Prague Express and Vienna Express classes are heading into the dry docks of two shipyards in Shanghai. The retrofitting of all the vessels should be completed in the coming year. 

Maersk Line: On 17th June the 48,788gt/2007 built Maersk Brooklyn experienced an engine failure in the English Channel whilst en route from Belgium to Malta. The 4,196 TEU capacity ship anchored safely eleven nautical miles off Greenwich Buoy and a tug was on standby. The ship resumed her voyage to the Port of Marsaxlokk once the necessary repairs had been made. On 8th July Maersk signed a newbuilding contract with Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI). The order is for 9 vessels with a capacity of 14,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) each. The agreement includes an option for up to 8 additional vessels. The vessels will have a length of 353m. This is the third order in Maersk Line’s investment programme announced in September 2014 and follows the seven 3,600 TEU feeder vessels and eleven 19,630 TEU Triple-E vessels announced earlier this year as part of Maersk Line’s USD 15 billion investment in newbuildings, retrofitting, containers and other equipment. Maersk Line will thus be able to acquire the capacity it needs, replace less efficient tonnage and increase its share of owned vessels. The nine vessels will join Maersk Line’s fleet in 2017 and sail under the Singaporean flag. 

MSC’s first Panamax containership to undergo beam-increasing surgery, the 65,000gt/2006 built MSC Geneva, completed sea trials in June but financial backer Nord LB said that she must be delivered before surgery commences on the sisterships. The four month project in Shanghai cost $12m. The KG-owned Panamax ship has been widened by 6.5m to nearly 40m from the middle, and the bow has been reshaped. The project has not only increased the ship’s capacity from 4,860 TEU to 6,300 TEU, but also largely improved her stability and fuel efficiency. However, there are hidden costs in terms of losses of operation days. 

OPDR’s takeover by CMA CGM (through its subsidiary MacAndrews) was approved on 8th July by the EC. The German short sea shipping operator Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Rhederei (OPDR) owns and operates a fleet of eight container ships ranging in capacity from 690 TEU to 1,008 TEU, as well as two 500 TEU/885lm Con/Ro ships. The ten vessels, built from 2002 to 2008, operate on routes linking ports in North Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal, the Canary Islands and Madeira, as well as Northern and Western Africa. The company also owns about 10,000 containers of different types. 

UASC’s 195,636gt/2015 built Barzan (18,800 TEU capacity) made her maiden call at the Port of Felixstowe on 25th June. The Barzan is deployed on UASC’s AEC1 service between Asia and North Europe and was named the world’s most environmentally friendly ultra large container vessel. She is the first of a series of six 18,800 TEU vessels being acquired by UASC for the Asia-Europe trade. Barzan is also a part of the industry’s first LNG-ready fleet and will set new standards for fuel and energy efficiency, due to optimized vessel design and an array of efficiency technologies. Preliminary calculations indicate an EEDI (Energy Efficiency Design Index) value that is close to 50% below the 2025 limit set by IMO.The new class of vessel has an overall length of 400 metres, breadth of 58.68 metres, depth of 30.6 metres and a draught of 16 metres. As well as Felixstowe, the AEC1 service calls at Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian, Port Kelang, Rotterdam, and Hamburg.