Rickmers names 4 Hyundai Heavy-built 13,100-TEU ships

THE Rickmers Group has christened four 13,100-TEU containerships at the Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) shipyard in Ulsan.

The Maersk Edinburgh (ex Pearl Rickmers) will be the first of these four ultra large containerships to enter service through a Maersk charter.


The other three vessels, the Ruby Rickmers, Aqua Rickmers and Coconee Rickmers, have also been chartered long-term to Maersk Line and will join Maersk`s "E-class" as the Maersk Emden, Maersk Eindhoven and Maersk Essen.


The ships will be delivered during July and August 2010, and phased in to Maersk`s new joint service with CMA CGM linking Asia and North Europe. As Maersk`s AE8 service, it will deploy 10 ships of this size, with each partner contributing five.


The port rotation for the AE8 is: Ningbo, Shanghai, Shenzhen-Yantian, Tanjung Pelepas, Port Kelang, Le Havre, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Port Kelang, Singapore, returning to Ningbo.


A further four sister ships are due for delivery to the Rickmers Group in 2011, also for charter to Maersk Line. All have been fixed for 10-year periods with further options.


"With volumes out of Asia again starting to rise and rates holding, container lines` confidence is growing. Given this, the timing of the delivery of these Rickmers Group ships is looking much better than it might have done six to 12 months ago," said Rickmers chairman Bertram Rickmers.


"With two more sister ships coming in January and February 2011, a seventh at the end of May and the eighth and final ship in the series due for delivery in July 2011, we need the global economy to continue this positive trend," he said.


Mr Rickmers noted that if it were possible to load all 13,100-TEU onto a single train, the train would be 100 kilometres long. Put another way, the train would arrive in Kiel on the Baltic coast of Germany before the last railcar had left the shipping company`s home city of Hamburg.