Thursday, August 16, 2012

Top Story

Atlantic Container Lines orders 5 new vessels

Atlantic Container Lines announced the order of five new ro-ro/containerships, or CONROs, from a shipyard in China that will travel at 10 percent faster speed while reducing fuel consumption per-TEU by 50 percent.

The Westfield, New Jersey-based company said in a statement that the new “bigger, faster, greener” 3,800-TEU G4 class ships with capacity for 1,307 vehicles would be built at the state-owned Hudong-Zhongua Shipyard in Shanghai and are scheduled for delivery in 2015.

“We will have the equivalent of 6,500 TEU containerships in terms of earning power and economies of scale, but with far lower costs,” said Andrew Abbott, president and chief executive of ACL.

ACL said it is also “studying its current port rotation and will be making some enhancements” such as possibly dropping “one or two traditional ACL port calls…to make room for a new South Atlantic port.”

Bill Kearns, ACL’s executive vice president, said: “We have been forced to put many of our loyal customers on allocations for many years because we were never able to grow with the market. It will be satisfying to be able to accept all the cargo that our customers offer us, instead of being constrained by space limitations."

ACL currently offers five weekly trans-Atlantic sailings week and also markets its parent company’s, Grimaldi Lines, direct ro-ro/container service between the U.S. and West Africa.

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