The biggest container ship to have ever called at the Port of Hamburg is called the CMA CGM ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY, the vessel arrived yesterday at HHLA Container Terminal Burchardkai.
The biggest container ship to have ever called at the Port of Hamburg docked at Burchardkai and will be handled at a special berth.
In the early hours of 15 March 2018, the CMA CGM ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY became the largest ship ever to arrive at the Port of Hamburg. The vast ocean liner will be handled at HHLA Container Terminal Burchardkai (CTB), where two high-performance berths are ideally equipped to accommodate the world’s biggest container ships.
“HHLA invested in state-of-the-art gantry crane and storage technology at an early stage in preparation for increasing ship sizes,” says Jens Hansen, Executive Board member at HHLA. “However, we are not just constructing on the quayside. We have also implemented measures to reliably and safely alleviate peak pressure resulting from the arrival of container mega-ships in terms of transporting containers to and from the vessels.”
The 400-metre-long CMA CGM ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY can transport 20,776 standard containers (TEU). Lined up next to each other, the containers would stretch for over 125 kilometres. The state-of-the-art tandem container gantry cranes at CTB will discharge approximately 7,000 TEU and load 4,000 TEU. In one go, they can move two 40-foot containers or four 20-foot containers with a total weight of 110 tonnes, the same weight as 70 mid-range cars. CMA CGM is one of the big global players among container shipping companies and has been a major customer of the Port of Hamburg for many years. Last year alone, CMA CGM ships called at the Port more than 930 times. The CMA CGM ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY uses sustainable technology that significantly reduces fuel and oil consumption as well as CO2 emissions.
Peter Wolf, Managing Director of CMA CGM Germany, believes that the first arrival of the CMA CGM ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY represents a major milestone: “We are very pleased to welcome our new flagship here in Hamburg for the first time. It will play a key role in regular services between Asia and Northern Europe. The fact that our biggest ships have been calling at the Port of Hamburg for decades demonstrates not just our confidence in the location but also our goal of continuous growth in the German market."
Source: HHLA