“The arrival of these two new cranes demonstrates our determination to meet the requirements of our customers, potential new customers as well as industry trends. Taking into account the dredging of the berths, we are now able to provide better facilities and services to our customers and give them more flexibility. These two new Liebherr cranes join four sister cranes commissioned during 2008 and 2009. Dredging work to deepen berth 205 and 206 and to widen berth 207 was completed in December 2010,” commented Chris Lewis, Managing Director, DP World Southampton.
The new cranes are an important addition to the existing fleet of 10 gantry cranes and a mobile harbour crane. It will bring the total number of 22 container wide capable cranes to six and together with the remaining crane fleet they will enable the terminal to service three ultra large container vessels at the same time. This investment fits well with the recently completed dredging programme which provides over 1,000m of quay with more than 14m depth.
The six super post-panamax cranes are capable of lifting containers 45 metres above the quay which enables the handling of 14,000 TEU vessels with nine tiers of containers on deck and 11 under deck. CMA CGM Cristophe Colomb and CMA CGM Magellan, which called at the terminal during 2010, and the CMA CGM Alaska which is due to call at the terminal later this month are examples of such vessels. The industry trend towards these ultra large vessels is very evident with many other shipping lines having already taken delivery of similar sized vessels or has them on order. Potentially such large container vessels can mean a reduction of carbon emissions compared to smaller vessels.