Germany: CTA Handles Its First 13,000 TEU Ship

At the weekend, a container ship with a carrying capacity of 13,000 standard containers (TEU) was handled at Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG’s (HHLA) Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) for the first time.

The Hyundai Together, owned by the South Korean shipping company Hyundai, will operate on Loop 4 between Asia and Europe. This is a new service from the G6 Alliance, founded at the end of 2011. Five out of the six services between Asia and Northern Europe offered by this group of shipping companies call at Hamburg and will be handled at the CTA.

“Thanks to its high degree of automation and its efficient processes, the CTA is designed to handle large container ships,” said CTA Managing Director Oliver Dux. “We are especially pleased that by handling ships with a carrying capacity of 13,000 TEU, we can demonstrate our efficiency and high degree of productivity.” The CTA, considered as the world’s most modern container terminal, is frequently singled out for awards due to its outstanding performance. For a number of weeks now, the facility, which celebrates its ten-year anniversary this year, has regularly seen ships with a capacity of more than 10,000 TEU calling.

The Hyundai Together came in on Saturday morning at around 3 a.m. and left the Port of Hamburg yesterday afternoon. When calling at port, around 60,000 tons of cargo were handled. On Saturday, harbour master Jörg Pollmann presented Captain Loukas Konstantinidis of the Hyundai Together with the admiralty plaque of the Port of Hamburg to mark the maiden call of the ship.

At 366.5 metres long and 48.2 metres wide, the Hyundai Together is the first of eight 13,000 TEU ships ordered by Hyundai to be delivered. The Hyundai Tenacity and Hyundai Smart, the next two 13,000 TEU ships awaiting delivery, will also call at the CTA while sailing Loop 4. Other ships operating on this loop belong to the shipping companies APL and OOCL, who together with Hyundai, Hapag-Lloyd, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Nippon Yusen Kaisha form the G6 Alliance.

In 2011, the Asian shipping region accounted for almost 60 % of HHLA’s container handling. This underscores the region’s importance for HHLA. It is on these routes in particular that many of the Ultra Large Container Ships (ULCS) – container mega-ships with a carrying capacity of more than 10,000 TEU – are deployed. Last year, almost 300 ULCS called at the Port of Hamburg. At HHLA’s terminals, the largest container ships can be efficiently discharged and loaded.

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Source: HHLA, April 16, 2012