Appetite grows for mega-containerships

摘要

In line with coming expansion of the Panama Canal, over 120 ships of greater than 12,000TEU capacity have been ordered this year alone. Samsung Heavy Industries, which claims to have been the first to market with a 12,600TEU capacity ship, has already secured orders for a market-leading 29 such ships this year - 16 for Peter Doehle, five for Claus-Peter Offen and eight for Zim Israel Navigation. In total, the shipbuilder has 54 containerships on order. Dubbed the 'PAAT Container' ship, where PA stands for the Pacific and AT for the Atlantic, these large ships are being built to the maximum size permissible to transit the New Panama Canal (as confirmed by Autoridad del Canal de Panama). This means a length of 366m, a beam of 48.2m, and a depth to the maindeck of 29.8m. Samsung reckons to have been leading the market in building ever-larger ships since 1990, when it launched its first 4000TEU capacity ship for Hapag-Lloyd. It says that the base structure for the 12,600TEU ship has been derived from its 10.000TEU forebear.