This new ship has started its inaugural journey, from Chinese port Xingang to northern Europe, within a service operated jointly with Maersk in the 2M alliance. (Photo ANAVE)

The Swiss shipping company Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has received the first week of July the MSC Gülsün, the container carrier with the highest capacity built to date: 23,000 TEU. It is the first of a series of 11 twin ships that the Korean shipyard Samsung Heavy Industries builds for this shipping and will be delivered over the next 9 months.

The MSC Gülsün is 400 m long, the usual dimension in the most recent mega container carriers. But, while these ships so far did not exceed 59 m of manga, this is the first with 61.5 m, thus having space to transport 24 rows of containers in the manga sense, allowing for a nominal capacity of 1,500 additional TEUs to be available against other operating ships. For example, the OOCL Hong Kong series, the one with the highest capacity to date (21,413 TEU) has a dimensions of 399 x 58.8 m.

The problem of overcapacity in the world container fleet is again emerging with this restart of the race by the size of the ships of the regular line operators. In 2017 the mark of 20,000 TEUs of nominal capacity was first exceeded. In addition to these 11 MSC ships built by Samsung, the Korean shipping company Hyundai HM expects the delivery, from the second quarter of 2020, of another 12 container carriers of 23,000 TEU.

The first container carrier of the class Triple E, Emma Maersk, delivered in 2006, had a capacity of just under 15,000 TEU with 397 m length and 56 m length, almost the same dimensions as the MSC Gülsün... according to experts, this new ship will need 4 additional days of time in port by rotation compared to its predecessors, resulting in longer transit times, unless the speed of navigation is increased.