Marine

China delivers world's largest container ship

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Capable of carrying more than 24,000 standard 20-foot shipping containers, stacked up to 26 high
CSSC
Capable of carrying more than 24,000 standard 20-foot shipping containers, stacked up to 26 high
CSSC
The MSC Tessa, the world's largest container ship ... for now
CSSC
Installing a rather sizable crank
CSSC
View gallery - 3 images

The China State Shipbuilding Corporation has delivered its MSC Tessa megaship to the Mediterranean Shipping Company. With a deck area of about four football fields, it's capable of loading up to 24,116 TEU containers at a time, stacked up to 26 deep.

At 399.99 m (1,312.3 ft) long and 61.5 m (202 ft) wide, the MSC Tessa can handle more than 240,000 tons of cargo. It's the first ship to break that mark, as well as the first that's able to carry more than 24,000 containers.

Interestingly though, it's almost identical in length and width to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of previous record holders in this space, all the way back to 2011's Triple-E Maersk container ship and beyond. And when it's succeeded, probably by the MSC Irina or MSC Loreto, both on order by the same customer, those ships will carry a couple of hundred more containers, but they won't be any physically larger either.

The MSC Tessa, the world's largest container ship ... for now
CSSC

The size limit isn't at the manufacturing end – after all, the biggest ship in history, the Seawise Giant supertanker, was 458.45 m (1,504.1 ft) long and 68.6 m (225.07 ft) wide, and that was built in the late 70s. Incidentally, the Giant was sunk in 1988 by the Iraqi Air Force, then remarkably salvaged and repaired to re-enter service by 1991, after which it remained in service in one capacity or another until the end of 2009.

But container ships aren't like supertankers, which can deliver their cargo through a big ol' hose. Dock facilities tend to place the upper size limits on machines like the MSC Tessa, and the current limits are likely to remain about as big as these things can get until a useful number of ports worldwide build out the land infrastructure to deal with something bigger.

So as total tonnage and container capacity creeps up, it's largely a matter of optimizing the ships' design to squeeze more and more on board. Which makes it particularly impressive to see that in the 12 years since the Maersk Triple-E reigned supreme with its 18,000-container capacity, shipbuilders have managed to expand capacity by a hair under 34%.

Installing a rather sizable crank
CSSC

The MSC Tessa is focused on efficiency, as you'd imagine given the numbers at play. Its chief innovation in this regard is a bubble-based, drag-reducing "air lubrication" system, which CSSC claims reduces energy consumption, and hence emissions, by as much as 4%. It's still a marine diesel, though, and without any viable replacements proven at this stage it's unlikely we'll see anything in the zero emissions world come close to these behemoths any time soon.

MSC is expecting three more just like it by August, and CSSC says the second of four has already completed sea trials. The four ships, according to Offshore Energy, have cost MSC around US$600 million in total.

See the MSC Tessa in action (and under construction) in the video below.

Source: CSSC

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8 comments
Uys Fick
24000 of 6meter containers, placed end to end, will cover a distance of 144km. The scale of this type of ship is beyond my comprehension.
jerryd
Take a good look as likely the biggest ever built just in time fo,r world cargo to shrink fast as production moves from China to back home, it is already obsolete.
Catweazle
A very parochial attitude, jerryd.
I suspect you'll find there will be plenty of customers in India, Africa and South America very happy to buy Chinese products.
Smokey_Bear
Catweazle - He's right.
Those countries don't import anywhere near the volume the US does from China. This ship was built for continued China/US economic trade. Which is shrinking. This ship is a day late & a dollar short.
Jot
@Smokey_Bear this ship was built for China - Europe trade, not US.
bwana4swahili
Going to be lot of containers at the bottom of the ocean when one of these runs into the worst that mother nature can throw at it!
bwana4swahili
@jerryd You're assuming people can afford 'Made in the USA'; most can't!
Timothy Neill
'Made in China' is going to become a lot rarer in the US and the rest of the world. China is pricing itself out of favorability with labor costs, so other countries are going to get more of the action. Much of it is demographic - China is aging rapidly, and they don't have another generation following the retirees to take up the slack and keep production going.

Americans will be in a better position to purchase goods made at home because energy costs for the rest of the world will skyrocket, and so will production costs, while America will be in a position to supply it's own energy in any form it prefers. American goods will be a better value domestically, relative to the expense of imports.

Some people are speculating that America might lose all interest in the Bretton Woods agreements, and simply cut off global protection of the sea-lanes for trade, meaning that giant, slow moving tubs like this one will be easy prey for pirates when no one is around to stop them. Of course, it's not impossible that the other major nations might band together and find a way to take up the slack. World trade would be disastrous to lose for everyone not called America.