Building Big – Maersk’s Triple-E class Container Carriers
Claudio Paschoa
September 12, 2013
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.