Oct. 30--THE five new mega-ship gantry cranes deployed at the HHLA's Tollerort terminal in Hamburg that handled the 13,400-TEU Cosco Netherlands have far greater capacity than was needed.

     More than 7,000 TEU were loaded and discharged from the vessel before it left the port, as part of a test to assess the readiness of the five gantry cranes to handle the 18,000 TEU-plus mega-ships that are rapidly being added to the Asia-North Europe trade, reported IHS Media.

    "Processing the Cosco Netherlands was a first test of our new mega-ship gantry cranes," HHLA Container Terminal Tollerort managing director, Thomas Koch, was quoted as saying.

    In the first half of 2017, ships with a capacity of 18,000 TEU or more called at Hamburg port 54 times - more than five times the number recorded in the first half of 2015. The number of calls by vessels ranging in size from 14,000 TEU to 17,999 TEU has more than doubled.

    New analysis from SeaIntel shows that the total number of weekly services between Asia and Europe has been steadily declining, mainly due to the phase-in of the larger vessels that has brought an element of capacity injection into the trade incommensurate with the demand growth.

    SeaIntel looked at the percentage of vessels per week in the trade that were 14,000 TEU in size or above and found that over the past year, the share of mega vessel departures grew from five per cent to 45 per cent.

    "From now until 2020 we will see the additional delivery of more than 90 vessels with sizes in excess of 14,000 TEU, and if we focus purely on the vessels sized 18,000 TEU and above, we will see almost a doubling in the numbers," the analyst stated.

    With the current orderbook of mega vessels, SeaIntel said by the end of 2020, 88 per cent of the ships on the Asia-Europe trade would be in excess of 14,000 TEU.

    More notably, the Asia-Mediterranean trade will by end-2020 be 83 per cent comprised of vessels in excess of 14,000 TEU, and will be entirely unable to absorb more than a small portion of the spillover from the North European trade.

    "Looking at the Asia-Europe data specifically, we are already close to the limit of what this trade can reasonably expect to absorb until 2020 in terms of vessel upgrades. Further bouts of mega-vessel ordering in the 18,000-plus TEU category is highly likely to result in excess capacity issues," SeaIntel noted.

    The global average call size in the first quarter of 2017 increased by 12.6 per cent year on year to 1,076 containers, according to data supplied to IHS Markit by the world's largest container ship operators.

    Ships with capacity larger than 10,000 TEU accounted for 10.7 per cent of port calls in the first quarter, up from 8.5 per cent in the same period the previous year, according to the data, which covers 879 terminals in 500 ports globally.

(Source:shippingazette)