The largest containership ever to call North America arrived on Friday, when the 12,500-TEU MSC Fabiola docked at Long Beach, Calif., the second busiest container port in the United States.
The vessel is deployed on MSC’s joint transpacific Pear River Express service with CMA CGM, in which the average vessel size is 10,440 TEUs, according to ComPair Data. The two lines each provide three ships on the service, with CMA CGM’s in the 9,400- to 10,100-TEU range. MSC provides one 11,660-TEU ship and one 9,200-TEU ship.
The ship called at the Hanjin-operated Total Terminals International facility on Pier T.
The average size of the vessels on the service make it the biggest loop in the trade, and shows that there may yet be a home on the transpacific for some of the large vessels displaced in the Asia-Europe trade as new big-ship deliveries crowd that lane.
Long Beach said in a statement that it expects the Fabiola to be “the first of what is expected to be a string of larger containerships to be deployed by ocean carriers in Pacific Rim routes. Currently, the larger containerships typically serving Asia and North America have capacities of about 8,000 TEUs.”
The ship was built in 2010 and is scheduled to return monthly to the TTI facility.
“Few ports can handle these giant ships,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Christopher Lytle. “Long Beach is big ship-ready, and we continue to invest so we’ll be ready for the next generation of larger, environmentally friendlier and more efficient cargo ships.”
The port said it is investing $4.5 billion over the next decade to modernize its facilities. Projects include the construction of the Middle Harbor terminal and the replacement of the Gerald Desmond Bridge with a higher span that will allow larger ships to reach the port’s back channels.
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