World’s largest boxship featuring 24 rows across is delivered

 SAM CHAMBERS

The world’s largest containership has been delivered this week by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries.

The 400 m long MSC Gülsün is the first boxship in the world to feature 24 rows across giving it up to 1,500 extra container capacity compared to the existing largest container vessels. The 61.5 m wide vessel is the first of 11 giants MSC is set to operate when they deliver from South Korea in the coming nine months.

The 23,000 teu MSC Gülsün will embark on its maiden voyage on a Silk/AE10 service operated with 2M partner Maersk on July 8 from Xingang to northern Europe.

Containership size records have repeatedly been broken in recent years, climbing above the 20,000 teu mark for the first time in 2017. South Korea’s HMM has a series of twelve 23,000 teu ships which will start delivering from the second quarter of 2020 and will likely rival MSC’s record-breakers for size.

Commenting on this week’s big ship delivery, Andy Lane, a Singapore-based container shipping consultant, referred back to the delivery 13 years ago of the Emma Maersk, which back in 2006 was a record-breaking 14,770 teu in capacity. “That ship was three metres shorter than the MSC Gülsün but only featured 21 rows across, and with a single island had a far lower cargo height profile. All things being equal, MSC Gülsün will require an additional four days of port time per rotation compared to Emma Maersk, which might result in either longer transit times or faster steaming,” Lane observed.

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World's largest container ship sets sail from Tianjin 

Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-08 23:13:01|Editor: Yang Yi

MSC Gulsun docks at the Tianjin Port Pacific International Container Terminal in north China's Tianjin, July 8, 2019. MSC Gulsun, the world's largest container vessel by carrying capacity, set sail from north China's port city of Tianjin on Monday, heading for northwestern Europe. (Xinhua/Mao Zhenhua)

TIANJIN, July 8 (Xinhua) -- MSC Gulsun, the world's largest container vessel by carrying capacity, set sail from north China's port city of Tianjin on Monday, heading for northwestern Europe.

With a maximum load of 224,986.4 tonnes, MSC Gulsun is capable of transporting 23,756 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), according to Jonathan Zhu, managing director of Greater China for the MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, the operator of the ship.

The vessel, 399.9 meters long and 61.5 meters wide, is scheduled to arrive in northwestern Europe after visiting various ports including Qingdao, Shanghai, Algeciras, Gdansk, Kaliningrad and Rotterdam.

Its cargo during the maiden voyage include steel, furniture and chemicals, said Yu Lei, general manager of China Ocean Shipping Agency Tianjin Co. Ltd.

Zhu said the ship chose to start its maiden voyage at Tianjin Port, as it is an important gateway port of northern China that boasts broad waterways and good berthing condition.

With trade links with over 180 countries and regions, the port now plays an important role in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. Its container throughput reached 8.33 million tonnes in the first half of this year, a year-on-year growth of 6.7 percent, higher than the average growth of Chinese ports.

The ship was built by Samsung Heavy Industries, the shipbuilding affiliate of Samsung Group of the Republic of Korea.