WALLENIUS WILHELMSEN CUTS ITS CONTAINER CAPACITY

WALLENIUS WILHELMSEN CUTS ITS CONTAINER CAPACITY    Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines, the Scandinavian roll-on/roll-off shipping group, will remove the container capacity of four of its largest container/ro-ro ships in the next few months, as part of a switch to the car sector.
   Wilh. Wilhelmsen, one of the two owners of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines joint venture, has placed a contract with the Chinese shipyard Nantong Ocean Ship Engineering Co. Ltd. to convert the container/ro-ro carriers to pure ro-ro vessels.
   The vessels concerned are the 2,455-TEU “Taiko,” “Tampa” and “Texas” — all built in 1984 — and the 2,800-TEU “Taronga,” built in 1996.
   The ships operate in Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines’ fortnightly round-the-world service. The service has a rotation of northern Europe, U.S. East Coast, Australasia, Far East, U.S. West Coast, U.S. East Coast, U.S. Gulf, U.S. East Coast, Canada and northern Europe.
   Wilh. Wilhelmsen said that “weak rate levels” for container transport continued to have negative effects on the results of Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines in the second quarter.
   The main decks of the four ships, used to carry containers, will in future have garage facilities, each with a capacity of about 1 600 car units.
   The cost of the conversion will be about $4.5 million per vessel. The conversion work will begin in September and the last ship is due to be delivered from the yard next February.
   Besides containers,    Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines carriers mainly cars, ro-ro cargoes and other non-containerized cargoes.
   A spokesman for Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines is not ending its involvement in carrying containers, and will use other vessels to move containerized traffic. The shipping line continues to operate older container/ro-ro ships built in the 1970s in its    fortnightly round-the-world service.