Evergreen Line has received the delivery of its newest 8,508-TEU box vessel that it has named Ever Linking and will deploy on the Far East-Europe route.
The naming rites for the second L-type ship to be built by the CSBC Corporation in Taiwan for the company were held at the ship builder’s Kaohsiung shipyard.
Ever Linking is 334.8 meters long and 45.8 meters wide, with 948 reefer plugs and a draft of 14.2 meters. The vessel can cruise at a speed of up to 24.5 knots.
With an optimized hull design, the Evergreen L-Type vessels can reduce fuel consumption on a typical voyage by about 15 percent compared to the carrier’s older S-type eco-ship for enhanced competitiveness.
Evergreen began its fleet rejuvenation program in 2010 with an order for 20 L-type vessels from Samsung Heavy Industries. This was followed in 2011 by an order for another 10 vessels of similar specifications from CSBC.
In addition, the Taiwanese box ship liner signed contracts to charter five 8,800-TEU vessels and ten 13,800-TEU ships as part of its service cooperation agreements with strategic partners.
The orders have a delivery schedule of July 2012 to the first half of 2015. There will be a planned redelivery of some 33 chartered vessels over this same period.
So far, 20 of the 45 newbuildings have been delivered, deployed on Evergreen’s network of services in the Far East, Europe, the Mediterranean, and South America.
Another four ships are scheduled for delivery by the end of this year, eighteen in 2014, and the final three in 2015. From next year, the new ships will start to be phased into Evergreen’s trans-Pacific service routes.
