World's Largest Container Delivered in China

Today, "Universe", the world's largest container ship independently developed and built by China, was officially delivered in Shanghai. This is a new breakthrough for China in the field of high-end shipbuilding and will further enhance China's capability in maritime transport.

The COSCO Shipping Universe, the largest container ship independently designed and built by China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), was officially delivered in Jiangnan Shipyard Group Co Ltd today. The "Universe" is the first ship delivered before a batch of six 21000 TEU Ultra-Large Container Ships (ULCS) that will be built by Jiangnan Shipyard Group Co Ltd for COSCO.

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The official delivery of the "Universe" marks that China has become one of the few ULCS manufacturers in the world.

The "Universe" boasts an overall length of 400 meters, a breadth of 58.6 meters, a maximum dead-weight of 198,000 tons, a designed speed of 42 kilometers per hour and a maximum 21,237 TEUs. After being put into use, the "Universe" will mainly run on the route from Asia to Europe. Currently, the major container ships on these routes can carry about 14,000 TEUs.

Yu lai, Chief Expert of CSSC and Deputy Chief Engineer of the 708 Research Institute of the CSSC

The "Universe" may lead to a 25 percent reduction in per-container cost when compared with the current 14,000 TEU ships that are actually the primary ship type on the Asia-Europe routes in the past few years.

In addition to great improvement of the loading capacity of the "Universe", many factors are fully taken into consideration, including the actual demands of various types of canvassed cargo along routes and stowage operations, increase of stowage flexibility, improvement of effective loading capacity of reefer containers, dangerous goods containers, heavy containers and high cube containers. The "Universe" can realize real-time monitor over the performance of the unmanned cabins and all the key parts of the ship.

The state-of-the-art pilot control systems, a ship-wide local area system and a ship-shore satellite communication system in the cab, are able to ensure a safe voyage and ship-shore communication in the global waters. Intelligent ships will become the development trend of future ships, and the subsequent series of ships will be equipped with intelligent ship systems independently developed by China.

Starting from the COSCO Shipping Universe, Jiangnan Shipyard will continue to build the remaining 5 container ships with a capacity of 21,000 TEUs for COSCO, which are scheduled to be all delivered in 2019. It is reported that the Jiangnan Shipyard will build another four dual-fuel container ships with a capacity of 22,000 TEU, setting a new record of the world's largest container ship.

In recent years, ULCS have become an main ship type in maritime shipping market. At present, there are more than 50 container ships of 18,000 to 21,000 TEUs delivered in the world. In the next two years, there will be more than 50 ULCSs to be delivered.

In the past, manufacturers that were able to build such high-end ships mainly came from South Korea. Now, the delivery of the "Universe" also marks the maturity and perfection of China's shipbuilding of ULCSs.

Source: CCTV International