Both Hong Kong-listed Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) and German liner Hapag-Lloyd are fielding their latest mega newbuilds on the Asia-Europe lane immediately.
OOCL christened September 27 the newest 21,413-twenty foot-equivalent unit (TEU) container ship to join its fleet this year.
Constructed by Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI), the OOCL United Kingdom is the fourth in the line of six ordered by OOCL from the South Korean shipyard.
The OOCL United Kingdom, together with her sister vessels, are currently the world’s largest by carrying capacity, according to chief financial officer Alan Tung.
“Following our ‘M Class’ of 13,208-TEU vessels also built here at SHI, we are delighted to be adding these state-of-the-art titans at sea ‘G Class’ containerships into our fleet,” said Tung at the naming ceremony.
The newbuild has an overall length of nearly 400 meters long, breadth of 383 meters, and depth of 32.5 meters.
It will be serving the Asia-Europe trade lane on the LL1 service on a 77-day round trip. Her port rotation is Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Yantian, Singapore, via Suez Canal, Felixstowe, Rotterdam, Gdansk, Wilhelmshaven, Felixstowe, via Suez Canal, Singapore, Yantian, and Shanghai.
No more newbuild orders
As this developed, Hapag-Lloyd accepted the delivery September 28 of another large container ship at the shipyard of Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries (HSHI) in South Korea, even as it announced it won’t be ordering any ships in the short term.
With a capacity of 15,000 TEUs, the Al Jmeliyah is classed as an ultra-large container vessel (ULCV) and is the last in a series of 17 newbuilds contracted to HSHI by United Arab Shipping Company (UASC) in 2013.
The series is comprised of eleven 15,000-TEU and six 19,900-TEU ships, the first of which was delivered to UASC in 2015.
Following the takeover by Hapag-Lloyd of UASC at the end of May this year, these units are now all part of the German ocean carrier’s fleet, which currently consists of 219 ships. This makes Hapag-Lloyd the fifth largest liner shipping company in the world.
“With this newbuild, our fleet—one of the youngest and most modern in the industry with an average age of just 7.1 years—is now complete,” said chief operating officer Anthony Firmin, referring to the delivery.
“We have no plans to order any more newbuilds in the foreseeable future,” he added.
The Al Jmeliyah will begin operating this weekend on the FE4 service of THE Alliance between Asia and Northern Europe, just like its predecessor, the Afif, which was delivered in July.
The Al Jmeliyah is 368 meters long and 51 meters wide, and has a maximum load rating of 153,148 tonnes. Its name means “the beautiful one” in Arabic.
