French shipping group CMA CGM has taken the delivery of its second ultra large LNG-powered containership, about one month after it welcomed the flagship Jacques Saade.
China State Shipbuilding Corporation’s Jiangnan Shipyard held a naming and delivery ceremony on October 27 for the CMA CGM Champs Elysees.
Jiangnan Shipyard and Hudong-Zhonghua, both owned by CSSC, are building in total nine 23,000 TEU LNG-powered sister vessels for the French group.
Hudong is building five vessels, with the first already operating, while Jiangnan Shipyard is constructing four ships from this batch.
The first vessel Jaques Saade is on its maiden voyage to Europe and recently left Singapore carrying 20,723 full containers. This set a world record for the number of full containers loaded on a single vessel, CMA CGM said.
The vessel arrived in Malta on Tuesday, Europe’s first port of call.
Jacues Saade is 400 meters long and 61 meters wide, such as its sister vessels will be, making them the world’s largest vessels powered by LNG.
Furthermore, the ships 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 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.