AXS-Alphaliner Newsl..

ALPHALINER Weekly Newsletter 2009-Week 16
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TERMINAL UPDATES
VLCS presents
challenges to current
Hamburg draft conditions
Hamburg receives its largest containership
The port of Hamburg has welcomed its largest-ever containership, the
11,356 teu CMA CGM ANDROMEDA, completed two months ago by Hyundai
H.I. and assigned to the French Line’s FAL-1 loop. The call came less than
two weeks after Antwerp’s first ULCS call, which was performed by MSC
BEATRICE (13,798 teu)
The 363 m vessel is another milestone for Hamburg. Calls like those of CMA
CGM ANDROMEDA and the recent visit of MARIT MAERSK (10,000 teu) on her
delivery voyage, prove that Hamburg is ready to handle vessels of more
than 360 metres in length as regular callers.
Currently, most of the large mainline container ships at Hamburg stand in
the 8,000 to 10,000 teu range. Typically, such vessels have a length of 335
to 350 m, while the new breed of 11,300 to 14,000 teu ships will measure
about 365 metres in length. The step from VLCS to ULCS might seem small,
but Hamburg – just as Antwerp – is a river port, where vessels have to
travel some four hours upriver from the open sea and negotiate a busy and
winding fairway. In order to ensure that such river ports remain
competitive in the long term is it essential that they can handle the coming
generation of containerships.
However, neither Antwerp nor Hamburg nor any comparable river port can
presently accept very large and ultra-large vessels at full draft. In such
ports, the ships have to sail in with the flood tide on a slightly reduced
draft. These drawbacks are compensated by Hamburg’s and Antwerp’s
proximity to the consumer markets, the final destination of the ships’
cargo. In order to further improve nautical conditions for large (container)
vessels, dredging schemes are in the pipeline for both Hamburg’s river Elbe
and Antwerp’s river Scheldt.
At Hamburg, the CMA CGM ANDROMEDA is handled at HHLA’s Burchardkai
(CTB). CTB is presently undergoing a reconstruction scheme that will add
multiple ULCS-ready berths and double the facility's capacity to 5.2 Mteu
per year. The CMA CGM ANDROMEDA is presently the largest ship in CMA
CGM’s fleet. She is the first of a series of 12 units. CMA CGM is due to
receive its first of a series of eight 13,300 teu ship in July.
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