ACL orders new ships

   The transatlantic liner carrier Atlantic Container Line said today that it has ordered five new combination container/roll-on, roll-off ships from a Chinese shipyard that will be delivered in 2015.
   The ships, while having similar dimensions to its existing five vessels will have the ability to carry 3,800 TEU of containerized cargo, a 105 percent increase in capacity compared to its current ships which can carry 1,850 TEU. The new ships will also have greater capacity to carry large ro/ro cargo–764 units compared to the 525 units today, and 1,307 cars compared to 1,000 today.
   The ships have an unusual design with both the house, bridge, ro/ro and car decks located in the midsection of the ship and containers carried fore and aft. Andrew Abbott, the president and CEO of ACL, said that instead of carrying 12,000-15,000 tons of ballast water, the ships will now be stabilized by having more containers.
    The ships will be built by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding in Shanghai, a firm that Abbott says has experience building complicated vessels such as LNG and LPG carriers as ships for the the Chinese Navy.
   He declined to say what ACL will pay for the ships but said that the price had fallen dramatically from the $140 million to $150 million the company was quoted when it first began shopping for replacement vessels. He said that the yard had given his company, a subsidiary of Italy’s Grimaldi Group, that that they had asked him not to reveal the price.
   With the increased capacity Abbott said that the company hoped to go from having 4 percent to 9 percent of the transatlantic container market and from 12 to 18 percent of the transatlantic ro/ro market.
    For shippers, the new ships will mean that ACL will be able to carry more of their cargo, he said. Today the company imposes allocations on its customers that limits the amount of cargo they can accept from any one shipper.
   He also said the taller and unobstructed ro/ro decks will give it even more flexibility when handling oversize cargo. The company currently charters its car decks to Wallenius Wilhelmsen and he said he would like to see the relationship between the companies continue.
   Abbott indicated that when the new ships go into service in 2015, the company will change its port rotation to include a port in the Southeast U.S.–Charleston, Savannah or Jacksonville. That will probably require dropping another port in its current rotation. The company currently calls Halifax, New York, Baltimore and Hampton Roads in North America and  Liverpool, Antwerp, Gothenberg and Hamburg in Europe.