Released onto the world’s seas on July 30, 2021, the Ever Ace has officially named the largest freight container ship in the world. Costing over $150 million to create, The South Korean company, Samsung Heavy Industries started construction on this freight vessel in 2019. The Ever Ace arrived at the port of Taipei on August 8, 2021, after being released from the Qingdao port in Shanghai, China. It was carrying 6,200 TEU at the time and was greeted with a celebratory welcome when it arrived. The plan is for the Ever Ace to navigate through shipping routes between Northern Europe and Asia.
How Big is the Ever Ace?
The length of the Ever Ace is approximately 1312 feet long and can carry an estimated weight of around 225,000 tons. The widest point of the ship stretches more than 200 feet with a max speed of 22.6 knots or about 26 miles per hour. In terms of freight container capacity, this ship can carry 23,992 TEU. This is more than 3000 TEU’s greater than Evergreen’s Ever Given, the ship the got lodged in the Suez Canal in March of this year. For reference one TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit) is a unit of measurement for one 20-foot container. The previous largest container ship, HMM Algeciras has a TEU of 23,964.
Evergreen has recently announced a project to bring 70 freight vessels into the shipping industry. The freight vessels themselves are planned to be of different sizes and carry different amounts of containers. The total amount of TEU’s that these vessels may be able to carry together is a massive 688,000 TEU’s. This amount will be added to the current number of TEU capacity of over 1.3 million TEU’s.
Why So Many Vessels?
The Ever Ace is part of a series of ULCC (Ultra-Large Crude Carriers) freight container ships ordered for Evergreen that is expected to be finished in the coming years. This series is going to feature 12 of the 70 vessels that were previously mentioned. However, this particular series of ULCC vessels being developed is planned to be roughly 20% bigger than Evergreen’s current biggest ships.
One of the main reasons Evergreen has ordered so many freight vessels is because of the current international shipping industry. There has been a shortage of freight containers over the past year and this could persist well into 2022. The coronavirus created a scenario where there are not enough workers to manage these containers, and this may create a backlog. Despite the shortage, the demand for shipping freight has risen considerably. Evergreen has been growing its vessel line to meet these demands. Evergreen also revealed last month that they plan on adding an additional 6,000 freight containers as a response to the shortage.
A way that Evergreen is attempting to have an advantage in the current market is by expanding its operations. For example, the Europe-Asia shipping route tends to only have 14,000 TEU vessels. Vessels with 20,000 TEUs and higher are being introduced in this route to boost shipping amounts. While the freight shipping industry has been facing unfavorable situations, Evergreen Corp has been having success in terms of business. It has made profits of over 3 billion U.S dollars in only the first half of 2021 alone.
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