One Newtonian day, a few decades ago, Malcolm McLean a trucker, while looking at the slow pace of loading cotton bales onto a vessel piece by piece, wondered as to why couldn’t an entire truck be hoisted aboard ship, and then used for delivery purposes at the other end. His proverbial apple was the truck minus the prime mover and wheels that evolved into the container loaded on specialized ships called container carriers.
Even the genius that he was, he could never ever have imagined that the ‘truck’ he suggested to hoist directly into the ship’s hold would multiply into 20,000 ‘trucks’ on a single vessel.
This week saw one such behemoth – the 20,182 TEU container ship MV MOL Treasure, managed by Hong Kong based Fleet Management Ltd make its maiden call at Hong Kong’s HIT terminal in Kwai Chung. Less than 3 weeks into her delivery from Japan’s Imabari shipyard, MOL Treasure is the worlds’ 2nd largest container ship by DWT and Fleet's 7th Ultra Large Container Vessel (ULCV) – a term used to define ships larger than 14,000 TEUs. With a length of 400 mtrs and breath nearly 60 mtrs a single walk around this beauty would have you cover almost 1 kilometer. On another measure queuing up each one of those 20,000 plus TEU’s one behind the other would make a trail 124 Kilometers long.
ULCV ships have undoubtedly brought economies of scale in an extremely competitive liner shipping market. Even so, the management of ULCVs poses numerous navigational and operational challenges. As an example, if the navigating team attempts to stop a ship of this size at full speed – it would take a full 15 minutes and 5.5 Kilometers to accomplish the task. And that is if the engine is reversed to its max.
“Indeed! The responsibility that comes along with the pride of managing ULCV ships is tremendous”, says Mr. Kishore Rajvanshy, Managing Director at Fleet Management Ltd, Hong Kong. “Towards this end, Fleet is taking various measures to ensure that voyages of their ULCV managed fleet remain safe as they must. From advanced navigation simulator courses for ship staff, to very close monitoring and support by experienced shore based professionals. Fleet is ensuring that size does not matter when it comes to our multifarious ship management”, he added.
Head quartered in Hong Kong, Fleet Management Ltd is the world’s 3rd largest professional manager of merchant ships – supplying seafarers and technical know-how to a diversified fleet of more than 450 modern ships with an average age of 7 years.
The MOL Treasure is one of 20 ships that are more than 20,000 TEU’s and one of 102 ships that can carry more than 15,000 TEU’s in the world. There are in all some 5,190 container ships that ply the world’s oceans – source Clarksons’ Shipping Intelligence.
Sources:XINDE MARINE NEWS
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