Friday, October 11, 2013

New RoRo Reefer ship co-designed by Danish ship builder

Danish shipbuilder Knud E. Hansen A/S, Reefer Intel and Stena RoRo have developed a larger-than-average reefer vessel for the banana trade that will save up to 40 percent in unit costs, according to the designers.

"There are 300 vessels used in the banana trade just now but only 10 have been built in the last ten years," said Birger Lindberg Skov, managing director at Reefer Intel, at the Cool Logistics conference in Rotterdam this week, according to Fresh Plaza. "If we don't start building new ships it will be a disaster."

The design has 45 percent more capacity than an average reefer ship, and would haul up to 11,500 High Q pallets or 621,000 boxes of bananas.

The reefer vessel features a weather deck and a lower deck that can be loaded and unloaded independently from each other. The loading/unloading design can cut the time at port down to approximately 12 hours, allowing more time for cost cutting measures such as slow steaming.

"If we don't do anything, the reefer will fade away," said Skov. "We need to do this in order for banana shippers to remain in control."

For more of the Fresh Plaza story: freshplaza.com

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