The Weekly Containershipping-Newsletter by Jan Svendsen and Jan Tiedemann. August 2006, 34 th week

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1 August 2006, 34 th week Hanjin Bremerhaven s Maiden Call +++ London Gateway Port Approved +++ Maersk Baltimore at Rotterdam +++ New Feeder Type: Euro Solid +++ Bunker Costs Keep Income Down +++ Emma Heads for Sea Trials +++ DFDS Acquires Norfolk Line Containers +++ Delphis Buys Portlink +++ Container Super Liners: Who Will be Next? Hanjin Bremerhaven s Maiden Call Last Saturday, Hanjin Shipping s most recent fleet addition premiered at Hamburg: Hanjin Bremerhaven docked at the South Korean Line s dedicated Berth at the Eurogate terminal. The new vessel had recently been delivered by Hyundai HI of Ulsan. It is the first unit of a series of eight identical ships that will upgrade Hanjin s main Asia Europe sling. Hanjin Bremerhaven is 304m long, 40m wide and carries up to 6,655 TEU. Her 12 cylinder Sulzer NSD engine develops a healthy 68MW, enough to drive the vessel at a speed of 26.5 knots. Compared to the similarly-sized 25-knot vessels of the Hyundai Shanghai class, the new ship s power rating has been increased by some 11MW. Hanjin ultimately intends to utilize the new ships high service speed to trim transit times from Asia to Europe by two days. However, the loop s schedule will have to

2 remain unchanged until the entire line-up of ships has been replaced by the new class of vessels early in Hanjin Bremerhaven upon her first arrival at Hamburg. Photo: Jan Tiedemann London Gateway Port Approved After a lengthy period of standstill, several new port development projects have been launched in the United Kingdom recently. Early this year, the British government finally approved the Barthside Bay project in Harwich, as well as the seaward extension of Felixstowe s container terminal. In mid-august, the go-ahead was given to another important port development project, the so-called London Gateway Port. This new container facility will be located on the River Thames Essex bank in the Borough of Thurrock. It will be constructed on the abandoned site of the former Shell Haven oil refinery, closed in Recent studies reveal that about one third of all domestic containers shipped through UK ports are either destined for, or originate from an area within a 40km radius of this site. Since the old refinery already provided berths for large tankers, the water depth at the site and in the approaches is already guaranteed at 14.5m. Rail and highway access is close at hand. P&O Ports (now part of DP World) and Shell UK originally proposed the plans as soon as 2001, but it took half a

3 decade to further develop the scheme and obtain government approval. The new London Gateway terminal is designed for an annual capacity of 2.3 million TEU in the first phase. The capacity will be increased to 3.5 million TEU once the entire 2.3km of quay are available. The six berths will be eventually equipped with 27 super post panamax gantries. The seaward approach will be dredged to 16m. The planned terminal layout includes the installation of a 60ha-marshalling yard for trucks and trailers and two roro berths. The terminal project is part of a much larger development scheme: The London Gateway Plan covers an area of land stretching some 60km eastwards from London on both sides of the River Thames and the Thames Estuary. This area, which includes much brownfield land, has been designated a national priority for urban regeneration. Container Port Development in the United Kingdom. Map: Jan Tiedemann Maersk Baltimore at Rotterdam This weekend, the port of Rotterdam welcomed a unique visitor: Maersk Line s German-build container carrier Maersk Baltimore visited the Maasvlakte on her delivery voyage. The new ship is destined to serve on an Asia North American East Coast loop via the panama canal. With her bridge positioned amidships, the ship is an easily distinguishable member of the B-class, constructed by Stralsund s Volkswerft, a subsidiary of A.P. Møller. Their unique design with a very slender hull is dictated by the vessel s high service speed of 29 knots. After loading at Rotterdam, the vessel sailed for Newark, where she

4 will be introduced to her service. Check out Newsletter 2006/31 for more details. The container frigate Maersk Baltimore has just left the port of Rotterdam on her positioning voyage to the U.S. Photo: Jan Svendsen New Feeder Type: Euro Solid A new feeder vessel has been christened at the Peters Schiffbau GmbH at Wewelsfleth, a small town on the lower river Elbe in Nortern Germany. While we certainly cannot account for every container feeder that is launched, we would not want this ship to go unnoticed, since it is the first of a news design. Global Hanseatic Shipping of Hamburg had ordered the ship that now carries the name Euro Solid. The new feeder is build to the highest ice class standards and can carry up to 801 TEU. Euro Solid is m long 21.70m wide and draws 7.83m of water. With a deadweight of 8,800t, the new ship is the largest ever delivered by Peterswerft. An MaK Diesel a very popular choice for container feeders with 8,4MW drives Euro Solid to a maximum service speed of 18 knots. After completing an identical sister vessel, the yard will build four units of a stretched version of the same design. These ships will be delivered to Global Hanseatic, too. Bunker Costs Keep Income Down High Bunker prices continue to put pressure on container shipping lines results. Hanjin Shipping s recently published first half results show a considerable profit decline despite a healthy growth in boxes carried from January to June this year. Total

5 sales were stable at +0.8% (USD 3.04 billion) but operating income at USD 55.6 million was down 81.2%. Higher fuel costs and appreciation of the Korea s Won by 5% contributed to the disappointing result. Net income experienced a year-on-year drop of 55.6% compared to the same period in In the first half of this year, Hanjin carried 1,598,421 TEU a plus of 17.6%. Earlier this month, NYK slashed their full year forecast, following disappointing first-quarter results: Predicted year-end revenues have been scaled down form USD 780 million to USD 517 million. NYK said that difficulties in rate restoration and higher than expected bunker prices have significant impact on the profitability of container ship operations. The line states that earnings from the liner trade will under-perform in comparison earlier results. Hanjin s and NYK s statements come shortly after MOL and K-Line also downgraded their year-end profit expectations. More or less at the same time, Standard & Poor s has cut back Hapag-Lloyd parent company s rating outlook after branding TUI s financial target 'unrealistic'. Emma Heads for Sea Trials Late in the afternoon of Wednesday, August 16 th, Emma Maersk, the world s largest container carrier, finally left Odense s Lindø shipyard for Århus. The new ship did not sail under its own power, but was instead towed by a whole flotilla of tugs: Four Svitzer boats, two of Röda Bolaget and even one from Norway. Thousands of spectators watched Emma enter the Batic Sea through the narrow Gadet Sound. The ship will receive its finishing touches at Århus and also start is sea trials from there. Emma Maersk is scheduled to be phased into Maersk Line s AE1 loop an September 14 th. Despite these rather positive news, Lindø shipyard s future is however still in limbo: Presently, the yard almost exclusively depends on containership orders from its parent company. Weighing up the pros and cons of ordering in-house, Maersk Line seems increasingly tempted to built large container ships in the Far East. Maersk Line threatened to no longer place orders at Lindø unless the Odense shipyard manages to implement a whole catalogue of measures to significantly improve productivity. However, the yards attempts to streamline its production process have obviously been quite successful: Construction of hull number L-

6 204, the second ship of the present series, is said to be not only on time, but even well ahead of schedule. A whole flotilla of Svitzer tugs nudges Emma in position. Photo: Jan Svendsen DFDS Acquires Norfolkline Containers Last week, multimodal short sea carrier Norfolk Line has signed an agreement for the divestment of its Container Division Norfolk Line Containers B.V. The buyer is DFDS Tor Line, the well-known liner shipping operator, which is part of the Danish DFDS Group. Norfolkline, a subsidiary of A.P. Møller, wants to focus on its core business of roro transport and to dispose of activities with no clear synergy with the rest of the Norfolkline Group. The transaction is conditional upon clearance from the relevant competition authorities. Both parties have agreed not to disclose the price. Delphis Buys Portlink The Antwerp-based multi modal transport company Delphis, well-known after rather surprisingly taking control of feeder operator Teamlines earlier this year, have purchased yet another shipping company: Last week, Delphis announced the takeover of feeder operator Portlink from Safmarine Container

7 Lines. Like Delphis, Portlink is based in Atwerp and is active in the Northern Europe Iberian Peninsula trade. Portlink offers door-to-door transport services and runs feeders out of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Felixstowe. With this acquisition, Delphis expand their service network yet again. The company s short sea routes now cover the range from Gibraltar to St. Petersburg and serves more than 30 ports. Delphis now employs some 45 vessels and will move 1.1 million TEU in 2006, according to forecasts. Please support your national lifeboat association. Check out the websites and find out how you can help. Container Super Liners: Who Will be Next? Now that the first +13,000 TEU container super liner is a reality, some might wonder who will be first to follow Maersk Line in the race for size? There are a handful of shipping lines that might have the potential to successfully operate ships of such giant dimensions, as well as yards that could build such a ship right away. Apart from A.P. Møller s Lindø shipyard, Hyundai HI were among the first to venture into the terrain of supersized container ships: Last year, Germanischer Lloyd of Hamburg and Hyundai HI had already presented a jointly developed 13,500 TEU container ship. Up until then, research labs, naval architects and universities had already produced several proposals for very large box carriers. However, these designs were more or less experimental. The design by Hyundai HI and Germanischer Lloyd was the first that was developed to the point that the yard would actually accept orders for the ship. While Hyundai was without a doubt successful in winning orders for large container carriers, the Koreans did not manage to find a buyer for their 13,500 TEU design, so far. Recent rumours suggest that another classification society, namely

8 Bureau Veritas, has joined forces with a well-known shipyard to develop a 13,500 TEU design, too. Industry sources suggest that this joint-venture might be driven forward by a potential customer. So maybe we will see the first order for such a ship within the course of a year. Overview of today s top four Asia - Northern Europe container loops (excluding Maersk Line) by TEU capacity. Calculation: Jan Tiedemann A closer look at the present world containership order book and a look at some recent developments within the shipping industry, quickly narrows the field of likely operators of such vessels down to a handful of companies. Coscon, CSCL, CMA- CGM and MSC will probably be the foremost candidates: All of them already employ +9,000 TEU vessels and neither of them is a member of one of the great alliances. So all seem fit to include container leviathans in their fleet line-up for mainline trades like Asia-Europe. One question that remains is, if these operators could guarantee the availability of adequate terminal facilities in all ports along the loop. APM Terminals has prepared the arrival of the E-class jumbos for some ten years: Today, all its key hubs are fitted with a sufficient number of gantries that straddle 22 rows of deck containers. Nevertheless, even Maersk Line cannot yet guarantee perfect conditions for its new Jumbos

9 in every port: Bremerhaven for instance can only accept these ships on a rather limited draught and still struggles to provide an adequately sized turning basin for 400m-vessels. The same draught restrictions apply at Hamburg. The city s port does have the facilities to handle very large (+13,000 TEU) ships in theory, but actually none of its terminals is presently ideally suited for ships of these dimensions. Access to Antwerp would be a problem too, since the river Scheldt is even less deep than Hamburg s Elbe in places. Its winding and narrow fairway is definitely not suited for ships of Emma Maersk s dimensions, especially not if they have to negotiate the river with a deep draught. So maybe alternative designs for container jumbos will be laid out to draw just as much water as today s standard designs of around 8,000 TEU. The aforementioned GL-HHI proposal was actually designed like this and featured a twin engine and twin screw propulsion. No details of Bureau Veritas s recent alternative design have made their way to the public yet. This series of (suggested!) Emma Maersk cross-sections points towards a total capacity of 12,908 TEU Rendering: Jan Tiedemann Now that Emma Maersk has pushed the boundary of size, on thing is certain: The next generation of containerships will come. It s no longer a question of if but rather a question of when. Surely, the industry will eagerly watch how Emma Maersk will perform under real-life conditions: If she does her job well, she is bound to trigger more orders for ships of her size. Containership-info will try and keep an ear on the track for you. In the meantime, go ahead and solve the mystery of Emma Maersk s TEU capacity: Download our capacity calculator

10 from the miscellaneous section of our website. It allows you to stow as many containers on the ship as you like and calculate her total capacity! *** This Newsletter is edited and compiled by Jan Svendsen and Jan Tiedemann. This pdf-file is available for download at and Feel free to contact the editors by at and We greatly appreciate your feedback and your input. More contact details can be obtained from the above websites. Please note the disclaimers displayed on the download pages. All information given in this newsletter is believed correct, but not guaranteed. For assistance with the present issue, the editors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Helge Barth and Klaus Masuch.