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The Port of Baltimore
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September/October 2012
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Soundings
SHIPPING
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ACL Thinks Outside the Box
With Innovative Vessels
C
onstruction of the world’s five largest roll-on/roll-
off/container ships (CONROs) has been contracted
by Atlantic Container Line (ACL), with delivery
expected in 2015. The shipping company is going to replace
Generation 3 CONROs currently operating in its transatlantic
service with five Generation 4 vessels that should greatly
increase productivity.
The new CONROs will be the first of their type in the
industry — bigger, faster, greener, and more efficient than their
predecessors, according to ACL officials. The G4s will have a
capacity of 3,800 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs), plus
28,900
square meters
of roll-on/roll-off (ro/ro)
space, with a car capacity
of 1,307 vehicles. Speed will
increase by 10 percent while
fuel consumption per TEU is
reduced by 50 percent.
“
The dramatic increase
in efficiency is essential
for our long-term com-
petitiveness,” said Andrew
Abbott, President & CEO
of ACL. “We will have the
equivalent of 6,500 TEU container ships in terms of earning
power and economies of scale, but with far lower costs.”
While ACL also announced that the company might possibly
drop one or two traditional ACL port calls from its current
rotation to make room for a new South Atlantic port, company
officials acknowledged that Baltimore has been integral to
their operation. “Baltimore has been, for a lot of years, the
most user-friendly port we call,” Abbott said. “[Maryland Port
Administration Executive Director] Jim White and the rest of the
group in Baltimore have done a super job making it easy for us
to come there. We fully expect that Baltimore will remain a part
of our plans moving forward.”
The G4’s innovative design, conceived by Denmark-based
International Maritime Advisors (IMA), bucks traditional think-
ing by putting all ro/ro cargo midships and stowing containers
in cells fore and aft of the ro/ro section, thus resulting in actual
cargo replacing the need for ballast. “The designer came to
us thinking outside the box,” Abbott said. “At first, we kind
of laughed him off. But the more we started working with the
design, the more we realized this is a brilliant idea.”
All five G4 vessels will be constructed by Hudong-Zhonghua
Shipbuilding in Shanghai.
ACL President & CEO Andrew Abbott
is looking forward to a “dramatic
increase in efficiency” with the
company’s new CONROs expected to
be delivered in early 2015.
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF ACL