This is the age of mega ships. These massive ships are carrying more cargo than ever before, and play a vital role in maritime transportation, dictating the future of the shipping industry. Just two years ago, the largest ship had a capacity of 19,200 TEUs.
Today, the biggest containership, the OOCL Hong Kong, is just over 21,000 TEUs, and 25,000 TEU vessels are on the horizon. The race to deploy these behemoth ships is having a significant impact on container terminal operations, and causing many carriers to wonder if today’s port facilities are sufficiently prepared to accommodate larger vessels and move more cargo, all while maintaining or improving operational performance.
To keep pace with the increasing amount of goods coming in and out of ports on mega ships, terminals must adapt their operations, ensuring that containers are unloaded and loaded seamlessly, with minimum time at port. Demands for greater efficiency have created a real challenge for terminals. To quickly process mega ships, terminals now require larger container gantry cranes, longer and deeper berths, increased crane productivity, in addition to more yard space, and better inland distribution to move containers in and out
