Port welcomes its widest visitor ever
THE massive car carrier M V Thermopylae, which docked in the East London Port yesterday, made history as the widest vessel to ever enter the harbour.
It is also able to carry a lot more cars – around 8 000 instead of the 6 500 of previous car carriers.
The ship, which according to its captain Hitinder Singh is worth about $90-million (R1.13-billion), was built in the Hyundai shipyard in Korea and has a width of 36.5m, which is 4.5m wider than all other car carriers to enter the harbour previously.
The gargantuan ship is also just under 200m long, with a total tonnage of 75 283 tons.
Niran Sheoprosad, head of Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean (WW Ocean) South Africa, said the vessel was a specialised type of car carrier, a High Efficiency RoRo (HERO), designed to make more efficient use of the wider Panama Canal, while boasting “increased width and capacity, greater flexibility for a variety of vehicles and other wheeled or trailerborne cargo, as well as reduced fuel consumption and carbon emissions”.
The vessel also has a “shallower draft, enabling it to dock even in developing countries where depth can often be an issue”.
When a Daily Dispatch team toured the ship yesterday, it was in the process of offloading 595 passenger cars and light and heavy commercial vehicles before heading off on a 10-day sail to Australia to deliver Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
The vessel, which has 13 cargo decks, some of which are fully adjustable, was yesterday filled with a variety of vehicles from the newest Mercedes-Benz bakkies and G-classes to CAT construction vehicles and John Deere farming vehicles.
Despite its size and capacity, the vessel only has 25 to 28 crew. Transnet National Ports Authority’s East London port manager Sharon Sijako said: “In order to establish whether we could safely dock the height and width of these HERO vessels, a simulation exercise was conducted in the town of Leer, Germany, with W W Ocean, Lloyds of London and the Port of East London.”
Velile Dube, GM of Cape Channel for Transnet Port Terminals (TPT), said: “It is indeed pleasing to witness such big vessels arriving on our shores and we are delighted about the opportunity to handle these import and export units, thereby facilitating economic growth in SA.”