The largest container ship ever to call on the US arrived at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach last week. The MSC-operated 19,500 TEU ‘MSC Eloane’ arrived in Los Angeles on 13 March, as part of a 2M alliance service.
The stevedore for this call was APM Terminals’ Pier 400 in Los Angeles, according to maritime consultancy Dynamar.
The previous record was marked with CMA CGM’s 17,900 TEU ‘CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin’, which performed three Transpacific sailings in the first half of 2016. These ships are now operating in the Europe-Far East trade.
Sources say a big part of the ship’s dispatch to the US will be to pick up empty containers which were left as backlog.
On the sidelines of a conference in Long Beach last week, Jeremy Nixon, Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Network Express expressed concerns over the fact that monthly imports have risen significantly over the last seven years, while export figures remain same. More than half of the containers going back to Asia are empty, he stressed.
