MSC SOLA – the biggest container ship to date at the Port of Hamburg

On 18 May 2010, the MSC SOLA docked at the Port of Hamburg for the first time.

With the deployment of the MSC SOLA, the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is expanding its scheduled liner service, called the “Lion Service”, at the same time increasing its capacity. The units deployed in this service running between ports in the Far East and Hamburg have already been large vessels, with slot capacities between 9,200 and 9,600 TEU. They will gradually be replaced with units offering slot capacities of more than 11,000 TEU.

The container vessel MSC SOLA is 363.5 metres long and 45.6 metres wide, with a slot capacity of 11,660 TEU (20-foot standard containers), with connections for 960 refrigerated containers (reefers). These dimensions make the MSC SOLA the biggest container ship handled at the Port of Hamburg to date. “An ever-increasing number of large container ships are calling at the Port of Hamburg. In the year 2009, we recorded as many as 69 arrivals of ships with capacities above 10,000 TEU,” says Port of Hamburg Marketing press spokesman Bengt van Beuningen. “The order books of shipyards and current developments in the fleet of container ships worldwide suggest that the trend towards larger units will continue. The MSC shipping company is also opting for larger units and is planning to deploy additional ships with capacities up to 14,000 TEU in the near future,” adds Bengt van Beuningen. In the company of Captain Heino Sumfleth from the Nautical Centre and representatives from MSC Germany GmbH and EUROGATE, the captain of the MSC SOLA, Domenico Pica, was presented with a plaque bearing the Admiralty coat-of-arms of the Port of Hamburg on the occasion of the ship's inaugural arrival.

Hamburg is an important port for MSC and its customers. A total of five scheduled liner services operated by MSC link Hamburg with ports in the Far East, South America, India, South Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Handling the large container ships operated by MSC at the Port of Hamburg makes the deepening of the fairway in the Lower and Outer Elbe an absolute requirement. For example, when loaded to fulll capacity, the MSC SOLA has a maximum draught of 15.50 metres. The draught limitation and the passing restriction to a combined beam width of 90 metres currently in force on the Elbe between Glückstadt and Wedel make the scheduling and commercially viable loading of these large vessels more difficult. Taking advantage of prevailing tides, ships arriving from the North Sea bound for Hamburg are permitted a maximum draught of 15.10 metres, and those leaving the Port of Hamburg bound for the North Sea can have a maximum draught of 13.80 metres.

“The arrival of the MSC SOLA is a powerful illustration of the need to implement the planned upgrade of the fairway in the Lower and Outer Elbe. As a result of the draught and width limits currently in force, the MSC SOLA is only able to reach the Port of Hamburg partially unloaded, and even then only during a narrow time window. In the long run, restrictions of this kind will not be acceptable to shipping companies. With the number of large container ships calling at the Port of Hamburg having increased considerably and set to increase further in the future, the deepening of the fairway in the Lower and Outer Elbe has become more urgent than ever," demands Norman Zurke, managing director of the Industry Association Hafen Hamburg e. V.

The rotation of the weekly MSC liner service “Lion Service” takes 77 days and includes the following ports in Asia: Singapore, Chiwan, Busan, Qingdao, Ningbo, Shanghai, Yantian, Nansha, Hong Kong, and back to Chiwan and Singapore.

Containerised traffic with Asia via Hamburg reached a total volume of 4.2 million containers (TEU) in 2009. With 2.3 million TEU, the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong) retained its top ranking among the most important trading partners in container traffic for the Port of Hamburg in 2009, ahead of Singapore. Other leading trading partners in Asia are South Korea, Malaysia and Japan.

MSC is the second-largest container shipping company in the world. It is based in Geneva. In Hamburg, the shipping company is represented by the liner agency MSC Germany GmbH.