The largest container vessel ever built in San Diego, Lurline, was christened and launched by General Dynamics Nassco, on Saturday, June 15. The vessel is a 870-foot-long, 3,500 TEU, 44,200 deadweight metric ton, combination container ship/roll-on, roll-off (ConRo) vessel built for Honolulu-based Matson, Inc.
Knud E. Hansen, a ship design company, designed the first generation of LNG-powered ultra-large ro-ro vessels for the newly-established Swedish company Wallenius-SOL. The 1A Super ice-classed vessels will have a length of abt. 242 m and a deadweight capacity of abt. 27,000 t making them largest in the class.
The Metro Vancouver region is home to the Port of Vancouver, the largest port in Canada. Port of Vancouver-related activities help support more than 115,000 jobs in Canada and the trade of over $200 billion in goods annually. About 8 ships call on the Port of Vancouver every day.
32 years have passed since the capsizing of Herald of Free Enterprise, only a few minutes after leaving Zeebrugge port on 6 March 1987, killing 193 people. The incident is considered, not only as the deadliest casualty involving a UK-registered ship since 1919, but also as a wake-up call for safety improvements.
China Merchants Energy Shipping (CMES) announced its plan to raise around RMB4.1bn ($610 million) through new share offering. The company will use part of the money to fund newbuilds on order, including four VLCCs and two VLOCs. It also expects to spend $50 million on fitting 10 VLCCs with scrubbers.
The UK MAIB issued an investigation report on the UK-registered ro-ro passenger ferry, Pride of Kent, that struck a jetty and then grounded while departing Calais, France, on December 2017 amid loss of control. The ferry was re-floated later that day and moved to a berth where the passengers disembarked.
DP World PLC, the Dubai-based port operator, announced its interest on purchasing the holding company of P&O Ferries and P&O Ferrymasters of GBP 322 million (USD 421 million). The transaction implies a 2017 Enterprise Value/EBITDA valuation multiple of 6.1x.
Port of Rotterdam’s throughput in 2018 resulted to 469.0 million tonnes, a little bit higher than 2017. Container transhipment reached a 4.5% increase in tonnage, whereas measured in TEUs, the standard unit for containers, increased by 5.7% and the annual total was 14.5 million TEUs.
Yilport Holding, port management and logistics subsidiary of Yildirim Group had a ‘golden year’ due to the increase of its business and volumes growth. The worldwide terminals handled 6.41 million TEU containers in 2018, reporting 5% year-on-year volume development in comparison to 2017, that was led by its 10 container terminals in Turkey, Scandinavia, Iberia, and Latin America.
Trelleborg will provide to the Port of Langnas an automated rope-free mooring system, ‘AutoMoor’. The system uses smart technologies to enable a faster berthing process and improve safety levels within the port environment. The port has international cruise ferry and domestic ro-ro ferry berths and is situated in the Baltic Sea, on the archipelago of Aland which has ferry traffic between Sweden and Finland via Aland.
