The ocean carrier said these versatile ships will be able to operate in a variety of trades.
Maersk Line has signed a new building contract worth $1.1 billion with Hyundai Heavy Industries for nine containerships with a capacity of 14,000 TEUs each. The agreement also includes an option for up to eight additional vessels.
Søren Toft, chief operating officer for Maersk Line, said the company had taken a new approach with the order because “The vessels will be designed to operate in and perform efficiently across many trades and not just designed for one specific trade. They will help us stay competitive and make our fleet more flexible and efficient.”
Maersk said the vessels will have a length of 353 meters, but would not reveal their beam, when asked if they were designed to fit through the Panama Canal or some other restricted waterway.
“I can be very frank and say that we have decided not to disclose that fact for now in terms of the width of the ship,” Toft said in an interview with American Shipper.
Last year, Jorge Quijano, the administrator of the Panama Canal, said while the new locks at the canal were designed to accommodate ships with capacity for 12,500 TEUs, naval architects have optimized new designs for ships with 14,000 TEUs that will be able to pass through the new Panama Canal.
Toft said the ships “are certainly built and designed with versatility in mind. One thing we know for a fact is that when we acquire ships, over their lifetime — be that the 15, 20, or 25 years they are sailing in our fleet — one thing we know for a fact, is that most, if not all the ships, will eventually not sail in the trade that they started to sail in. So they are built with versatility in mind, and hopefully they are going to serve us well for many, many years.”
“Designing vessels with a flexible operational profile is a first for Maersk Line,” the ocean carrier said in a statement. “By moving away from hulls designed with a certain speed and draft in mind, Maersk Line is strengthening its fleet with vessels which can be deployed on East-West or North-South trades where requirements differ, with no impact on fuel consumption.”
Toft said fact that the company can operate the ships at different speeds did not mean Maersk was stepping away from its commitment to slow steaming.
The new ships “are certainly built with slow steaming in mind, they are built with the absolute maximum energy efficiency in mind,” he said. “At Maersk Line, we very much believe slow steaming is here to stay — not only because of the fact that it has served us well in terms of taking bunker cost out, also because of the fact that if we were to go back to a different situation we would be throwing a bunch of capacity into the market that neither the market nor Maersk Line needs.”
He also said Maersk is very committed to driving carbon dioxide emissions down, noting that since 2007, the company has managed to reduce CO2 emissions per TEU/kilometer by 40 percent.
That’s “something we are quite proud of and something that is not only good for the environment but also the bottom line and we are committed to the next stretch in our path and that is to get to 60 percent by 2020,” said Toft.
The nine vessels will join Maersk Line’s fleet in 2017 and sail under the Singapore flag.
This is the third new-building order Maersk has announced in recent months. In March it ordered seven ice-strengthened feeder ships with capacity of 3,600 TEU for use in the Baltic, and in June it ordered 11 “second generation” EEE ships with capacity for 19,630 TEUs, with an option for six more. (The maritime shipping and offshore classification services said separately that on Tuesday that it has been selected to class the 19,630 TEU ships, being built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) of South Korea.)
Toft also noted Maersk has announced plans to charter 11 containerships with capacity of about 9,500-10,000 TEU for delivery in 2015 and 2016 from the companies Seaspan and Oceanbulk Containers.
Maersk Line orders 9 more 14,000-TEU containerships
