TERRY HUTSON AS CONTAINER ships on the global trades keep increasing in size, it was only a matter of time before some really large container ships began entering the South African service. Apart from an occasional positioning call, it was left to SAECS (SA - Europe Container Service) to set the scene a couple of years ago with six new ships each capable of carrying over 4000 TEUs, replacing the ‘Big Whites’ and similar vessels on that service. But now Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has upped the stakes with a newbuild, MSC Benedetta, which arrived on the South African coast a week ago almost fully laden. And there’s a second sister ship following. Built earlier this year at the Hanjin Shipyards in South Korea, the ship carries up to 5 100-TEUs, making this the largest capacity container ship in regular service to South Africa. Just a couple of years ago most pundits considered it highly unlikely that a ship of this capacity would be introduced on the South African service so soon, but the surge in worldwide demand for ever larger ships is unabated. Just five years ago the largest container ships of the day were around 5 000-TEU capacity, now they are double that. And ‘secondary’ services such as the north/south trades are experiencing similar growth patterns but on a different scale. The interesting trend however is that a number of the new ships being introduced on the north/south services are newbuilds, not older larger tonnage released from the east/west trades. MSC already has several ships in the 4000-TEU class on its service operating between Northern Europe and South Africa but now comes MSC Benedetta to be followed by sister ship MSC Olga in mid November – incidentally Olga is the 50th newbuild to be built for MSC by two Korean yards. All this puts into some perspective the urgency of terminal upgrades, plus the need to widen and deepen the harbour entrance at Durban.
