Southampton welcomes its largest container ship
Wednesday 8th November marked the maiden arrival of the Milan Maersk, the largest container ship to visit Southampton.
The Milan Maersk, which is 399m long, 58.6m wide, and can carry 20568 20' containers, weighs a staggering 214,000 tonnes and is less than a metre shorter than the world's longest vessel.
The vessel departed Shanghai on October 1, less than a fortnight after entering service, and called into Ningbo, Hong Kong and Yantian in China before arriving in Colombo, Sri Lanka on October 17. It then passed through the Suez Canal before stopping in Felixtowe on November 2 and across the North Sea to Rotterdam. From Rotterdam, the ship made her way to Southampton, where it headed back to sea in the early hours of this Thursday morning towards Bremerhaven and Rotterdam before heading back to Suez and the Far East.
Milan Maersk is a new Triple-E class container ship. The Triple-E class is among the largest and most efficient fleet of container vessels in the world. In 2016 the largest container vessel calling in Southampton had a capacity for 16,000 containers. And this year we have so far welcomed MOL Triumph and MOL Trust with a capacity for 20,170 containers. Milan Maersk is one of the largest vessels of her type in the world with a capacity for 20,568 containers – that’s nearly 400 containers more than MOL Triumph.
The megaship belongs to the second generation of Maersk Line’s Triple-E class (Economy of scale, Energy efficient and Environmentally improved) and is part of a series of eleven container ships, which will be delivered by the end of 2018.
Milan Maersk’s propulsion and software system creates energy savings which aims to reduce carbon emissions per container vessel by 35 percent.
ABP Southampton Director, Alastair Welch said: 'Milan Maersk is just the latest of these new mega ships to visit the Port of Southampton. Not only are these vessels bigger, they are much cleaner too and we are seeing more of these new generation of ships visiting across the port's key trades. The Port of Southampton is ideally suited to welcome these megaships.'
To view a video of the arrival please click here
Source: Daily Echo
Images are courtesy of Solent Photographer Andrew Sassoli Walker