World's largest box ship - 23,000 TEU MSC Gulsun - enters service :

THE world’s largest containership, the 23,000 TEU MSC Gulsun, has been delivered by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries and will embark on its maiden voyage

on a Silk/AE10 service operated with 2M partner Maersk next Monday (July 8) from Xingang to northern Europe.

 

The 400-metre long vessel is the first box ship in the world to feature 24 rows across giving it up to 1,500 extra container capacity compared to the existing largest container vessels.

The 61.5-metre wide vessel is the first of 11 giants MSC is set to operate when they are delivered from South Korea in the coming nine months, reports Singapore’s Splash 247.

 

Commenting on the delivery, Andy Lane, a Singapore-based container shipping consultant, referred back to the delivery 13 years ago of the Emma Maersk,

which back in 2006 was a record-breaking 14,770 TEU in capacity.

 

‘That ship was three metres shorter than the MSC Gulsun but only featured 21 rows across, and with a single island had a far lower cargo height profile. All things being equal,

MSC Gulsun will require an additional four days of port time per rotation compared to Emma Maersk, which might result in either longer transit times or faster steaming,’

Mr Lane explained.

 

Container ship size records have repeatedly been broken in recent years, climbing above the 20,000 TEU mark for the first time in 2017.

South Korea’s HMM has a series of twelve 23,000 TEU ships which will start delivering from the second quarter of 2020 and will likely rival MSC’s record-breakers for size.