French shipping group CMA CGM has taken the delivery of its first 23,000 TEU containership, the world’s largest LNG-powered vessel, in China.
China State Shipbuilding Corporation’s Hudong-Zhonghua hosted the delivery and naming ceremony for the CMA CGM Jacques Saade on Tuesday at its Shanghai Jiangnan-Changxing Shipyard.
The vessels’ digital naming ceremony saw the shipyard’s representatives in Shanghai and CMA CGM’s management in Marseille celebrate the milestone via a video link.
To remind, Hudong’s Jiangnan launched the LNG-powered giant in September 2019 followed by sea trials in March and the completion of its gas trials last month.
The vessel will depart to Europe on Wednesday where it is expected to arrive in November but CMA CGM did not provide an exact schedule of the vessels’ inaugural trip.
Following arrival, the giant containership will serve the Europe-Asia route bunkering LNG from the MOL-owned and Total-chartered Gas Agility.
Worth mentioning here, the world’s largest LNG bunkering vessel arrived off Rotterdam in August and the duo officially named it in the Dutch port on Friday.
Hudong and Jiangnan Shipyard are building in total nine 23,000 TEU LNG-powered sister vessels for the French container shipping group.
The Chinese yard also built Gas Agility that will fuel all of these vessels from its base in Rotterdam.
Furthermore, all of the containerships will be 400 meters long and 61 meters wide, making them them the world’s largest vessels powered by LNG.
The ships will feature WinGD’s dual-fuel engines and GTT’s 18,600-cbm fuel tank, both largest ever built. This LNG tank will allow these giants to make a round-trip on the Asia-Europe route with a single fill.
CMA CGM LNG plans
CMA CGM previously said it expects to take delivery of all of the 23,000 TEU vessels by the first half of 2021.
Once delivered, they will all work on the Europe-Asia route.
The shipping group aims to have in total 20 LNG-powered vessels in its fleet by 2022 as it looks to comply with the new IMO standards and slash emissions.
These include chartered Eastern Pacific Shipping’s 15,000 TEU containerships and smaller vessels of 1,400 TEU.