Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - asia

The new Triple-E class container ships are set to debut with Maersk livery. Maersk’s purpose in acquiring these behemoths is to take advantage of thier enormous capacity, which will enable Maersk to carry the greatest number of containers in the most energy efficient way, with the smallest CO2 footprint. Maersk thinks the time is ripe to order these new vessels as the annual market growth for Asia to Europe (westbound) trade is forecast to be in the 5-8% range during 2011-2015. The Triple-E’s design expanded the ship’s inside cavity, attaining a 16% capacity increase in comparison to the Maersk Emma (equivalent to 2,500 containers), despite relatively little change in length and width. The Triple-E is designed to transport more cargo without adding engine power.

Maersk Line is building the world’s largest container ships to be known as the Triple-E class. Each ship will have a capacity of 18,000 20-foot containers (TEU) or most probably 9,000 40-foot containers, the later being more in use than the former. It’s important to note that TEU stands for twenty-foot equivalent units, therefore when dealing with 40-foot containers, we describe these as FEU (forty-foot equivalent). FEU may also be used to categorize two 20 foot containers. With the launching of this new class of container carrying ships Maersk will break its own world record. The Triple-E class ships are 400 meters long, 59 meters wide and 73 meters high, and the 20 new vessels on order are expected to be deployed on the vital Asia to Europe trade routes.