CMA CGM, based in Marseilles, France, is the world’s 3rd-largest container ship line by capacity, with a fleet of 470 container ships carrying an estimated 13 million TEU in 2015.
The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin was welcomed into the port by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at a ceremony held at APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles which was attended as well by Congresswoman Janice Hahn, who represents California’s 44th Congressional District, which includes the Port Complex at San Pedro, in the U.S. House of Representatives; the Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, Mario Cordero; Los Angeles City Council Member Joe Buscaino of the 15th Council District of Los Angeles, and other local officials.
“This is a very important milestone for American port operations and we are proud to be a part of it, said APM Terminals Chief Operating Officer, Jeff De Best. “We need to continue working with all of the stakeholders to ensure US ports are capable of handling the latest generation of larger container ships now entering service around the world.”
A total of 11,200 containers were handled during 56 hours of operations at APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles, the world’s largest proprietary container terminal. Steven Trombley, Managing Director of the terminal added “Our Operations team has been working eight cranes on a single vessel for more than a decade so we were confident of our core competencies. When CMA CGM presented us with the opportunity to stevedore their 18,000 TEU Benjamin Franklin, we were able to reflect on our past terminal operations experiences, review our best practices for Safety and Productivity, and then apply these skill sets to stevedore this megaship. Our goal was to test our capabilities, our management team, the ILWU labor, and the port’s infrastructure to prove that APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles was indeed, Big Ship Ready.”
APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles has been at the forefront of America’s advancement of port accommodation of ULCS, a category of vessels of over 10,000 TEU capacity, most of which are deployed on the Far East/Europe trade lane, transiting the Suez Canal and proceeding to European ports through the Mediterranean Sea. There are at present 200 ULCS in service in the world’s container ship fleet, with the largest capable of carrying over 19,224 TEUs. Vessels exceeding 20,000 TEU capacity are currently on order. APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles welcomed the previous record holder for largest vessel call at a US port in June 2014, with the arrival of the 13,000 TEU COSCO Development, operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Shipping. In March of 2015 the terminal also set a record with three 13,000 TEU vessels being worked simultaneously, representing a combined 34,465 container moves.
APM Terminals Pier 400 Los Angeles was ranked first in productivity for North American ports in 2014 in the JOC Group’s annual productivity report, with 92 crane moves per hour with a vessel alongside. The terminal has a total area of 507 acres, featuring a 442 acre container yard, an ondock rail facility of 41 acres with an additional 24 acres of ondock rail storage tracks. The facility is the busiest of the five APM Terminals operations in the United States, with a total of over two million TEUs handled annually at the Los Angeles terminal alone.