Megaship evolution

Excerpts from an article titled ‘Mega-ships: Are they maxing out in size?’ from the Journal of Commerce:

Many in the industry have seen the multifaceted negative impact of these megaships — the port congestion they trigger, the safety issues they raise or the diminishing fuel economies. But to the extent there has been pushback, it’s come largely from outside the carrier industry. The negative impact of mega-ships on seaport cities was the focus of a 108-page report published in May by the International Transport Forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Speakers at the JOC Europe conference spoke in alarming terms about the safety risks of mega-ships, with captains still not confident about what cargo is actually aboard and catastrophic fires that can occur with no obvious port of refuge. That is on top of growing complaints by shippers about port delays brought on by longer port stays and surges of thousands of containers coming off mega-ships in a single port call, overwhelming the ability of ports to move the boxes effectively through marine terminals. (New York-New Jersey, a port that’s experiencing chronic congestion tied to surges in container offloading, not coincidentally had the world’s highest average total moves per vessel in 2014, at 5,108, according to the JOC Port Productivity data.)

But though the impact of mega-ships on the larger system has come to be widely accepted, rarely do container line chieftains themselves acknowledge the limitations.

More at the JOC