MSC’s fleet has welcomed the ultra-large boxship “CELESTINO MARESCA,” which was delivered to the Bank of Communications Financial Leasing Company on March 23rd and is now being chartered to MSC. The vessel, built by the Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group at its Changxing shipyard in Shanghai, China, will start operating on March 30th.
The new ship will follow the Lion route, which takes her from China to Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and Morocco, before returning to Singapore and China. With a capacity of 24,116 TEU and a length of 1,312 feet, the MSC CELESTINO MARESCA is the second 233,000 dwt vessel that the Chinese shipbuilder has delivered to MSC this month.
However, even larger ships, such as the MSC IRINA and MSC LORETO with a transport capacity of 24,346 TEUs, are part of MSC’s shipbuilding program and will join the fleet in the future.
The new ship enters MSC’s service just one week after the first in its class, the MSC Tessa, another Ultra Large Container vessel. Currently, MSC has 14 such vessels under construction and expects to take delivery of one or two of these vessels every month.
According to the Hudong-Zhoghua shipyard, building these new 24,000 TEU vessels required overcoming almost 20 technical gaps and filing for 69 new patents.
Source: FleetMon
