ACL expects to order ships in 2011

ACL expects to order ships in 2011    Atlantic Container Line expects to order new ships in 2011 to replace its aging fleet of five G3 container-roll-on/roll-off ships operating between the United States and Canada and North Europe.
   Andrew Abbott, ACL's chief executive officer, said the company expects to finalizing a design for the replacement ships early in the year and begin discussing the order with shipyards after that.
   “Thank god we did not order them two years ago,” he said, noting new vessel prices have dropped significantly.
   Abbott said the company hopes to have slightly more capacity in the new ships, but said their length and other dimensions would be about the same because of restrictions posed by locks in Liverpool and Antwerp where ACL calls as well as the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which it traverses on port calls to Baltimore.

Abbott

   The company’s Web site said the five current ships have capacity for about 1,850 TEUs of container and 1,000 TEUs of ro/ro space and car decks with room for 1,000 units.
   He said the new design would not be dramatically different, retaining the ability to carry containers, cars and larger ro/ro cargo. He said the company will seek to make the ro/ro decks in the new ship more flexible, with moveable decks and other features that would allow more containers and oversize cargo to be carried when demand for automobile transport is soft.
   Abbott said the older ships, which were built in 1984-85 and lengthened in 1987, would be scrapped or perhaps sold to governments, but he said they would not be sold to the commercial market. ' Chris Dupin