OOCL Hong Kong Christened

The OOCL Hong Kong was christened at Samsung Heavy Industries on Friday. The Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) vessel will be a titan among container ships with a carrying capacity at 21,413 TEU. 

“While our industry seems to have the knack to ‘out do’ one another in building larger container ships relatively quickly these days, this project is nonetheless an important moment for us,” said C. C. Tung, Chairman of Orient Overseas (International) Limited. “Faced with increasing competition and un-ending pressure on costs, we need to take the bold step in operating larger size ships of quality and high efficiency in order to stay relevant and compete effectively as a major container shipping company.”

The last time that OOCL set the world record for the largest container ship was back in April 2003 with the OOCL Shenzhen, an 8,063 TEU vessel, also built by Samsung Heavy Industries.

While the TEU OOCL Hong Kong has more slots available for containers than any vessel currently sailing, her actual deadweight will be 197,500 tons, less than 20,600 TEU Madrid Maersk’s 206,000 tons, says analyst Dynamar in a recent Dynaliners report. The 20,200 TEU MOL Triumph has a deadweight of 193,200 tons.

Actual cargo carrying capacity is deadweight minus stores, bunkers, crew and spares. Effectively, this means OOCL Hong Kong will either have to carry lighter containers or more empty ones that the other ships to load to her maximum container capacity, says Dynaliners.

The OOCL Hong Kong will be serving the Asia-Europe trade lane on the LL1 service and her port rotation is: Shanghai / Ningbo / Xiamen / Yantian / Singapore / via Suez Canal / Felixstowe / Rotterdam / Gdansk / Wilhelmshaven / Felixstowe / via Suez Canal / Singapore / Yantian / Shanghai in a 77-day round trip.