The Seaspan Corporation, Hong Kong based owner and operator of containerships, took delivery of a 14,000 TEU containership, the YM Winner, in June. The ship was constructed at Hyundai Heavy industries Co. Ltd. and is Seaspan’s fifth Saver design containership and fourth delivery in 2015. The YM Winner then commenced a ten-year, fixed-rate time charter with Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp. The first two ships were the YM Wish (1st April) followed by the YM World (10th April), YM Wellhead (16th April) and YM Wondrous (24th May).

Hapag Lloyd: From the beginning of June, Hapag-Lloyd integrated the Port of Oslo into its Baltic Express Service (BAX). The BAX now links a total of six ports in Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Russia with the hubs in Hamburg and Bremerhaven, from where it will be connected to Hapag-Lloyd’s global service network. The first ship departed from Oslo on 4th June. The new port rotation of the BAX service is: Hamburg/Bremerhaven/Oslo/Muuga/Tallinn/St. Petersburg/Kotka/Klaipėda/Gdynia/Hamburg. In addition, Hapag-Lloyd offers two departures a week respectively, from Gothenburg and Helsingborg, via its Sweden Denmark Express (SDX) and Gothenburg Express (GTE) services. The first additional SDX departure from Gothenburg was on 9th June. Hapag-Lloyd has also ordered five container ships from the South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Samho Heavy industries (HSHI) for its South American trade. Each of the new ships is 333 metres long, 48 metres wide and has capacity for 10,500 TEU. In addition, they are equipped with a highly efficient main engine, an optimised hull shape and an innovative lashing and loading system for greater flexibility when loading. Another advantage is that each ship has space for up to 2,100 reefers. Hapag-Lloyd primarily uses the state-of-the-art reefer containers to transport perishable goods such as fruit, vegetables and fish to their destination in a temperature controlled atmosphere. The ships are intended to use the modernised Panama Canal when completed as until its rebuild, shipping companies have only been able to use ships with a maximum capacity of 4,900 TEU. Deliveries will commence as early as November 2016 with the first ship being required in time for the 2017 Latin American reefer season following the planned opening of the expanded Panama Canal in 2016.

CMA CGM: The 175,688gt CMA CGM Georg Forster (pictured), the second of the CMA CGM group’s 18,000 TEU capacity vessel series, joined the fleet on 2nd June. The 398m long and 54m beam ship is the second of six ships, all to be named after great Explorers. If placed together end to end, all containers carried on this ship would equal the distance between Hamburg and Hannover. Calling at 11 different countries, the CMA CGM Georg Forster will join the vessels sailing the French Asia Line (FAL), one of the most emblematic lines of the CMA CGM group. Sailing under the UK flag, the ship started her first rotation on 2nd June after delivery at the shipyard in South Korea. The vessel will be christened in Hamburg on 9th July, during a ceremony in line with the great seafaring tradition. The 18,000 TEU CMA CGM Bougainville is due to be delivered in July from the Samsung shipyard in South Korea. Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has also won an order from the company to build six 14,000 TEU ships for delivery from late 2016 through to mid-2017. The contract will help fill a gap in HHI’s order book, as its new orders have halved from $5.9bn last year to $3bn in the same quarter of January-March. HHI already has orders for eight mega containerships, five 14,100 TEU vessels for Seaspan and three 18,800 TEU ships for United Arab Shipping Co. CMA Cam’s backlog of ships to deliver now stands at 13 from Korea, China and the Philippines.

Maersk Line: on 18th May the company entered into a vessel Sharing agreement (VSA) with Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) on the Asia to East Coast of South America trade. A total of 22 vessels will serve two loops between the regions. MSC and Maersk Line will each operate six, 9,000 TEU vessels on Loop 1 and MOL will operate ten vessels of 5,500 TEUs on Loop 2. The new VSA is expected to start with the first vessel departure from the Far East during the first week of July. It will replace all current VSAs in place on this route, which will expire at the end of June. Since July 2014, MSC and Maersk Line have been working together via a 10-year, 185-ship vessel sharing agreement with an estimated capacity of 2.1 million TEU, deployed on 21 lines. On 2nd June came the long awaited announcement that Maersk Line had signed a new building contract with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME). The order is for 11 plus 6 optional second generation Triple-E container vessels with a capacity of 19,630 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) each. The vessels will have a length of approximately 400m, a beam of 58.6m, and a 16.5m draught. The contract has a value of $1.8 billion and was signed by Mr Sung- Leep Jung, President and CEO of DSME, and Mr Søren Skou, CEO of Maersk Line, at a ceremony at Maersk Line’s headquarters in Copenhagen. This is the second newbuilding order in Maersk Line’s investment programme, following the seven 3,600 TEU feeder vessels announced earlier this year. These latest new vessels will be the largest in Maersk Line’s fleet and are intended for the Asia-Europe service. The 11 Danish registered newbuilds will join the fleet between April 2017 and May 2018. As of May 2015 the Maersk Line fleet consists of 255 owned vessels (1.7 million TEU) and 346 chartered vessels (1.3 million TEU). The order book as of 2nd June 2015 corresponds to 0.4 million TEU or approx. 13% of Maersk Line’s current fleet. The vessels are two Triple-E (37k TEU) for delivery in 2015, seven Baltic Feeder vessels (25k TEU) for delivery in 2017, eleven 19K vessels (221k TEU) for delivery in 2017-18 and eleven 9.5-10K chartered vessels (108k TEU) 2015-16.