Breaking box barriers

This marks a significant uplift of the carrying capacity of container vessels based on a single engine design and one which not only gives Maersk a major edge over its competitors but also represents a big challenge on the terminal side of the business.

Accommodating such a vessel really generates the requirement for – and should present the opportunity for – highly productive vessel working. Already with the current top-of-the-range vessel designs, working entailing over five thousand moves per ship is not an unusual feature of operations and the new Maersk containership obviously has the potential to raise the bar in this respect. Highly productive container exchange will be essential to reduce port costs through expediting vessel turnround.

Maersk, of course, has the advantage of being able to operate its new behemoths in a virtually closed container terminal system, owned and operated by its affiliate APM Terminals. It also has the advantage of knowing what is coming when catering for the next generation of containership. Other terminals, except where it has suited Maersk to put them in the picture, have been left largely in the dark. This makes the launch of Emma Maersk, thought in some quarters to foreshadow a 15,000 teu Maersk containership based on a longer 420m design of the same class, all the more interesting.

Out in the public arena it at last allows all the main terminals to practically assess future terminal design requirements – one of which the Emma Maersk confirms will be a crane outreach that has to serve up to 22 rows of containers on deck.