Maersk Moller Makes her Maiden Voyage from the Far East

The first weeks of August, 2013 marked an important step in the development of intermodal transport between the Far East and Europe. On August 9, the Danish super ship, the Maersk McKinney Moller, became the first of the new Triple E Class container ships to make the transit between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the largest ship ever to make the trip through the Suez Canal in its 140 year history. The 15,000 TEU capacity of the ship contributed significantly to the record 4.8 million tons that passed through the Suez on that day, and marked the beginning of a new era in intermodal freight transport from the booming ports of China and South-East Asia to the West. The historic crossing of the world’s oldest man-made waterway by the first of Maersk’s new fleet of Triple E Class ships was the focus of a great deal of media attention, and was witnessed from the bridge by the captain and his official guests from the Suez Canal Authority. Almost poignantly, the Maersk McKinney Moller passed the Chastine Maersk, an 8,000 TEU container ship that it is designed to replace on the Eastern route, as it waited at the Great Bitter Lake for the Triple E Class ship to clear the Suez. As she exited the canal at the northern end, she also passed her sister ship the Evelyn Maersk, as she waited for the canal to be cleared for the southbound passage through the canal on the return trip to the East. The significance of this is the vast reduction in transit times that the passage through the Suez Canal has over the alternative route around the southern tip of Africa. This journey adds an average of 20 days to the time that it takes a ship to make the journey from Singapore or Shanghai to Western European ports. It is also significant to the Middle Eastern economy, with a large percentage of Egypt’s income being derived from the fees that it charges for the use of the Suez Canal, which contribute as much as $6 billion annually. It is hoped that the use of the canal by the new fleet of super ships will have a positive impact on the threatened revenues for the canal in recent years, as the danger of Somali pirates and a recessive global economy have seen many ships taking the longer, safer and cheaper route around the Cape of Good Hope.