Largest TEU Capacity and a High in Terms of Box Turnaround
SPAIN – With the ever larger breed of container ships coming on stream at the moment, records for cargo handling are tumbling at the ports and freight terminals around the world. Earlier this month it was London Gateway announcing better statistics but now it is the turn of a longer established deep water port, the Barcelona Europe South Terminal (BEST) owned by Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) to claim a new personal best with the arrival of the Mediterranean Shipping Company vessel,MSC London.
As well as the ship being the largest at 16,600 TEU capacity to call at the Spanish port the visit also set a new productivity record, discharging 618 containers, and loading 1,035, in less than eight hours: a rate of 212.58 moves per hour. Individual cranes operated at rates of up to 45 moves per hour, which BEST maintains is one of the best in Europe. Commenting on the new records, Guillermo Belcastro, General Manager of BEST said:
“BEST is the only semi-automated terminal in Spain and the only one in the Mediterranean to be equipped with 11 ship-to-shore gantry cranes large enough to handle the latest generation of mega-vessel. We achieved this record using seven cranes at the peak supported by our fleet of 36 automatic stacking cranes. Backed up with state-of-the-art operating systems, including HPH’s proprietary terminal operating system, nGen, BEST offers shipping lines and shippers the most efficient way of accessing markets in Spain and southern France.”
The MSC London is one of the largest ships operated by MSC, built in 2014, the vessel is 399 metres in length with a breadth of 54 metres and a draft of 16 metres. With a gross tonnage of 176,490 tonnes the call was the last at the port from the MSC Dragon Express service. The MSC London was followed on 11 February 2015 by a call from the 10,300 TEU Susan Maersk, the first call at BEST by the new 2M alliance between MSC and Maersk.
Photo: MSC London
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