The German ocean carrier took delivery of the 10,500-TEU Valparaiso Express from Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries this Wednesday, which will serve trade between the West Coast of South America and Europe.
Hapag-Lloyd’s Valparaiso Express
Hapag-Lloyd took delivery of the first in a series of five new 10,500-TEU ships from the Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries (HSHI) shipyard this Wednesday in Yeongam, South Korea.
The Hamburg, Germany-based ocean carrier and officials from the HSHI shipyard showed the vessel, the Valparaiso Express, to members of the press this week just days before delivery.
The ship plans to sail for its namesake port in Chile in time for it to be christened there on Dec. 7.
The Valparaiso Express and three sister ships in the series will enter Hapag-Lloyd’s SW1 service between the West Coast of South America and Europe. Hamburg-Sud will provide four vessels of similar size.
The SW1 has a rotation of Valparaiso, Callao, Manzanillo (Panama), Cartagena (Colombia), Caucedo, Rotterdam, Hamburg, London Gateway, Antwerp, Caucedo, Cartagena (Colombia), Manzanillo (Panama), Callao and Valparaiso.
According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, the loop currently deploys eight vessels with an average capacity of 4,128 TEUs. Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg Sud each provide three vessels, while CMA CGM provides two vessels.
Hapag-Lloyd will be ending slot charters on the EW1 and EW2 in favor of using the space on the larger ships.
The fifth ship will be deployed in a service to the East Coast of South America.
All five ships will be delivered by April 2017.
Richard von Berlepsch, managing director of ship management at Hapag-Lloyd, and officials from HSHI explained how the ship’s design and engine is optimized for the trade and will allow Hapag-Lloyd and its space sharing partners to take advantage of the new locks and widened Panama Canal, which opened for business this summer.
Designers took special pains to make the ship as friendly as possible to refrigerated containers since so much of the cargo the ship will carry is expected to be either frozen or chilled, consisting of goods such as fruit, vegetables, seafood, meat and pharmaceutical products.
The ship has 2,100 reefer plugs, 1,250 of which are above deck and 850 of which are below deck.
The reefer containers are 40-foot high cube containers that are nine feet, six inches high as opposed to standard ISO containers that are eight feet, six inches high.
The Valparaiso Express-class ships are designed with reinforced guide cells so that high cube containers can be stowed in any location on the ship, below or above deck. Most ships have restrictions on where high cube containers (including reefers) can be stowed.
The ship’s hull design, which is stubbier than the Panamax ships it is replacing, will be able to offer optimized fuel economy and cargo stowage over a wider range of conditions.
The Valparaiso-class ships are just some of the 44 ships that HSHI is expected to deliver in 2016.
HSHI has seen a sharp drop-off in the number of ships being ordered because of weak demand from shipowners.
The yard has just 63 ships on order as of the end of October. These include: seven containerships (five from Hapag-Lloyd and one from UASC), 10 car carriers, 34 tankers, three product carriers, four LPG/ethylene carriers, four LNG carriers, and one drilling rig. Together with its sister yards – Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) in Ulsan, Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, and the Hyundai Vinashin Shipyard in Vietnam – the company has a total of 248 ships on order, whereas in 2007-2008, it had more than 550 ships on order.
HHI’s yards have about an 11 percent share of the shipbuilding market and Korean yards generally have 26 percent market share.
That means a shipowner who places an order for a ship today might be able to obtain a slot to have a vessel built in the second half of 2018, instead of having to wait several years.
The sprawling HSHI yard covers 815 acres and employs 11,500 workers – 3,900 who work directly for the company and 8,600 who work for in-house subcontractors. The company’s yard in Ulsan is nearly three times larger.
It takes about 600,000 man-hours to build each one of the Valparaiso-class ships. Hapag-Lloyd signed an agreement to have the ship built in April 2015. Engineering work was conducted for 10 months, and steel cutting began last winter with the first of the ships delivered just eight months later.
Ships are built up out of “blocks.” Parts of the ship are built in different parts of the yard and then gradually welded together and outfitted in dry-docks or in their final stages while tied up at berths.
The blocks can range in size from 100 to 1,000 tons. Dozens of ships are under construction at any one time at HHSI, some nearly complete, and some with just one or two small blocks or cut pieces of metal. This week, there were 49 ships in some stage of construction.
Norbert Zelck, chief supervisor of new building for Hapag-Lloyd, explained the painstaking process that is used to assure the quality of the vessel.
Each morning, Hapag-Lloyd is given a list of work that is ready to be inspected. A group of engineers from the company or freelancers that specialize in ship construction are then dispatched to check various work – welds, coatings, electrical cabling, or pipes and tanks. Work is also checked by the classification society DNV-GL. For example, every pipe must be pressure tested and stamped by DNV-GL.
As the ship neared completion about a month ago, it was taken out for several days of sea trials with the captain, chief engineer and electrician aboard to test the engines, radios and navigation system.
Many errors are discovered during the outfitting of the ship, but they are often minor items such as electrical sockets being properly aligned or problems with windows. Just days before the ship was to be delivered, there were 400 open items. Small problems, along with issues that are discovered after the ship is in use, can often be repaired by the ship’s crew or when it is in port.
