Mega-sized container ships begin making port calls

Compiled by Bruce Abbe, strategic adviser for trade and transportation

Despite chronic over-capacity among the ocean carrier container steamship lines in recent years – made far worse this year due to the economic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic – new mammoth-sized container ships have gone into service and made their first port calls last week.

A few years back a couple of steamship lines took advantage of incentives and sweet deals to order several huge, 18,000 TEU (20-foot equivalent) container vessels manufactured by Daewoo Shipping & Marine Engineering in South Korea.

Industry observers wondered how ports, land-side infrastructure and need for balance in supply and demand would accommodate the big vessels. Previously, 14,000 TEU ships were – and still are – considered extremely large. That’s the maximum size that can squeeze through the new Panama Canal channel on the way from Asia to the East Coast market.

The orders set off a scramble by the ports to expand their infrastructure with higher- and wider-reaching cranes and deeper shipping channels to accommodate the big ships. Indeed, there have been challenges on land with storage space and added time needed to unload and load the ships.

The ocean carriers advised that the 18,000 TEU ships would serve the Asia-Europe trade routes going through the Suez Canal, with other larger ships to “cascade” down the system to serve the Trans-Pacific and Intra-Asia trade lanes.

Now the first batch of even bigger ships have entered service.

Hyundai Merchant Marine’s HMM Algeciras, a whopping 23,964 TEU containership – the largest in the world – made big news when it arrived at the Port of Antwerp, Belgium on June 12. A couple of days later it called at the DP World London Gateway at Thurrock port before heading on to the Netherlands and Germany and then returning to China and other stops in Asia.

On June 19, another huge container ship made big news on the U.S. West Coast when Mediterranean Shipping Company’s MSC Isabella, with a capacity of 23,656 TEUs, called at the Port of Los Angeles.   APM Terminals Pier 400 at LA handled a record-setting 18,465 containers.