Largest Containership to Call East Coast Via Panama Canal Generates Excitement
This story appears in the May 15 print edition of Transport Topics.
The Cosco Development arrived to fanfare on the East Coast last week as public officials celebrated the largest containership in history to cross the Panama Canal with destinations to Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina.
The vessel accommodates more than 13,000 industry-standard 20-foot-equivalent units, or TEUs. With dimensions of 1,200 feet long and 158 feet wide, the Development is more than 100 feet longer than the U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford.
The Neopanamax vessel visited the Port of Virginia first before scheduled stops in Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C.
“It is truly an incredible vessel,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe observed during a May 8 welcoming ceremony hours after its arrival. “This is history.”
Before the Cosco Development, the largest vessel to come to the East Coast through the nearly 1-year-old expanded Panama Canal was the MOL Benefactor, a 10,000-TEU ship.
The Cosco Development offloaded about 1,600 containers at the Virginia International Gateway terminal and then departed for Savannah about 24 hours later.
“We’ve seen nothing like her here,” Virginia Port Authority CEO John Reinhart said. “For years, we have been talking about the ‘next generation’ of vessels and the ‘big-ship era.’ This is what we have been preparing for: The talk is over, the big ships are here.”
“These large ships really represent opportunity and global trade,” Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne added, telling the crowd that the containers mean jobs and paychecks across the United States.
It’s the beginning of weekly Asia-to-U.S. East Coast service with 11 vessels between 11,000 and 13,000 TEUs that will traverse the Panama Canal to Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.
The Port of New York and New Jersey — the largest on the East Coast — won’t receive the Neopanamax vessels until crews remove the old Bayonne Bridge deck. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently announced that the work will be completed by June 30. There isn’t currently enough clearance to get under the bridge, but the upcoming 215-foot clearance can accommodate 18,000-TEU containerships.
Cosco Shipping is part of the Ocean Alliance, which includes CMA-CGM, Evergreen Line and OOCL. In the new alliance, each member is allowed to put containers on any ship of another member, which the steamship lines believe will help mitigate the oversupply of vessels in the ocean freight industry.
