The UMM SALAL is 365.5 metres long, 48.40 metres wide and is equipped with over 1,000 reefer slots, making it the first of nine hips of this size to be completed in 2011 and 2012.
Together with Jörn Warwel, deputy head of the Nautical Control Centre, Günter Kuhberg, Managing Director of UASC (NWE), as well as other representatives from UASC shipping line and the terminal operator Eurogate, the Captain of the UMM SALAL, Mohammed Sajid, was presented with a plaque bearing the Port of Hamburg’s admiralty coat of arms to commemorate the ship’s first call.
The UMM SALAL and the other UASC ships are fitted with ‘Stowman’ planning software produced by Interschalt Marine Systems, based in Schenefeld near Hamburg. The software optimizes container stowage and facilitates improved use of capacity. Over and above this the UMM SALAL is equipped with the most modern environmental technology, taking a leading role in convincing environmentally friendly transport management for such giant container ships.
The UMM SALAL will sail in the weekly Europe-Far East container service AEC-8, which UASC runs together with CMA CGM, China Shipping and Evergreen. The four shipping lines deploy the nine ships with a slot capacity between 9,500 and 14,100 TEU, in the AEC-8, the FAL-2 and AEX-7 services. They call at the following ports: Hamburg, Zeebrügge, Port Klang, Shanghai, Ningbo, Shekou, Hong Kong, Yantian, Port Klang, Le Havre, Rotterdam, Hamburg. The round trip for the complete loop will take 63 days. Together with the AEC-2 and leased slots on other services from other carriers UASC has a total of seven connections between the Far East and Hamburg.
So far in 2011 the Port of Hamburg has been able to greet three new Far East Services. In the first three months of the year 1.3 million TEU were handled, in waterborne container traffic with the Asia trade. That represents 15.7 percent more than in the same time period in the previous year.
