ANP
–
NOS News•yesterday, 20:24
—
The (for now) largest container ship in the world, the Ever Alot, has arrived in the port of Rotterdam. The vessel, nearly 400 meters long and 61.5 meters wide, can carry up to 24,004 20-foot (about 6 meters) containers. But there are doubts about the efficiency of these giant container ships.
–
View images of the arrival here:
–
–
Largest container ship arrived in Rotterdam
—
The Ever Alot has been in service since this year and can carry slightly more containers than other ships of the same size. That record will not stand for long, because the MSC Tessa will also make its maiden voyage later this year and that ship has a capacity of 24,116 containers of 20 feet. And there are already ships under construction that can carry even more cargo. The ships all have roughly the same dimensions, but they can carry more and more containers.
–
Bart Kuipers, port economist at Erasmus University. understands little of this increase in scale. “I had long expected that the limit had been reached,” he says in the NOS Radio 1 News. “Those ships are getting bigger, but the terminals where they have to unload those containers have not grown.” According to him, many terminals are therefore unable to unload these large ships efficiently, which leads to congestion. “And the handling of these containers to the hinterland via inland shipping also leads to long waiting times.”
–
‘Mainly a matter of prestige’
The port economist thinks that it is primarily a matter of prestige for shipowners to use such large ships. “I have the feeling that it is a matter of image. That you can say: ‘we have the largest ships, so we are also the best shipowner’.”
–
The Ever Alot sails under the Panamanian flag and is chartered by the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen. Evergreen ships have already called at Rotterdam. The best known is probably the Ever Given. This ship got stuck in the Suez Canal last year, preventing any other container ship from sailing through the important canal for days. After much haggling over who should pay the bill for the blockade, the ship finally arrived end of July in Rotterdam.
–
Other ships that were at one time the largest in the world and that were also unloaded in the port of Rotterdam included the HMM Algeciras (in 2020, maximum 23,964 20-foot containers) and the Ever Ace (2021, maximum 23,992 20-foot containers).
—
