|
The world’s newest and largest container ship afloat, Colombo Express, will
be heading for Northport in Port Klang with 8,750 containers on her maiden
voyage.
The mega sized container carrier joined the Far-East Europe trade under the
Grand Alliance members comprising of Malaysia International Shipping
Corporation, NYK Line, OOCL and P&O Nedlloyd.
The ship belonging to the Hamburg-based German carrier, Hapag-Lloyd has been
deployed to operate between Europe and Asia with a port rotation calling at
the ports Shanghai, Xiamen, Yantian, Hong Kong, Singapore, Southampton,
Hamburg, Rotterdam, Port Klang, Singapore, Hong Kong and again Shanghai.
Colombo Express, was built at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea is certainly
a ship of superlatives: with a length of 335m and a width of 43m, she is the
size of three football fields.
The vessel has a capacity of 104,000 tones and can carry 8,750 standard
containers and lined up end to end, these containers would stretch for 53
km.
The ship's diesel has an output of 68,640 kW or 93,500 hp and generates
sufficient electricity to supply a fairly large small town.
The engine provides the vessel with a speed of 25 knots, or about 50 km/h
which enable the vessel to make a round voyage in the Far East-Europe trade
in 56 days.
Hapag-Lloyd will commission seven more sister ships as well as two slightly
smaller units (8,400 slots) up to 2008.
This means a capacity increase of overall 86,800 slots (TEU). Hapag-Lloyd’s
fleet, today comprising 51 modern containerships with a total capacity of
approx. 192,000 TEU, will increase to 61 units by 2008. |
