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SHIPPING ULTRA LARGE CONTAINER VESSELS WATOP: This Is Why No Ultra Large Container Vessels Are Sailing to the U.S PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7zV7EqjRVY Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I have been interested in the sea and shipping since I was growing up as a child. I think I was just 22 when I tried to create an international trading company .. Burgess International Trading System (BITS). Its first transaction was shipping some cutlery from Japan to the UK. The product was shipped in several wooden 'packing cases' measuring about 5ft by 5ft by 5ft each. This was about two years before the first 20 foot and 40 foot 'containers' started to be used! Over the next few years I made several other attempts to engage in import/export trade with very limited success. The one positive has been that it taught me respect for companies that have been able to engage in international trade successfully! And, of course. it has also helped me appreciate the enormous progress that has been made in global cargo logistics over the past 60+ years ... and especially during the past 20 years! Peter Burgess
This Is Why No Ultra Large Container Vessels Are Sailing to the U.S WATOP Dec 24, 2024 3.14M subscribers ... 251,576 views ... 8.7K likes For copyright matters please contact us at: copymanagerwatop@gmail.com Transcript 0:00 online you can find maps that show ships out at Sea in real time this is what the world's oceans looked like when we started making this video different colors represent different types of ships this is what the map would look like if you took out all the ships except container vessels it seems like they make up the vast majority of ships in the world no seriously container ships are everywhere across the entire map in Europe North and South America and Asia but what if you set the filter to show only ships carrying 16,000 containers or more the situation changes right away now container ships are in Asia and Europe but there's not a single one in either of the Americas and yet we're sure we saw just as many ships in the Western Hemisphere as in the Eastern hemisphere looks like the really big container ships are avoiding this region why is that going to need a cup of coffee to make sense of this just an under inve reminder to do 1:01 the thing under the video if you forget anyway don't forget so container ships actually they didn't always look the way we're used to the first generation of container ships were actually modified bulk carriers or tankers since the beginning of containerization in the mid 1950s container ships have gone through six major waves of change the most important thing of course was the invention of the iso container in the 1950s it was based on specifications from the US Department of Defense fence and sparked a revolution in Freight transport the first commercially successful container ship was the ideal x a T2 tanker owned by Malcolm mle who actually invented the standard shipping container on its maiden voyage the ship carried 58 metal containers from Newark New Jersey to Houston Texas the trip was a big hit just like the ones that followed and the industry grew fast soon ships were already hauling 500 to 800 containers at a time and by the s that 2:00 number had grown to 1,000 to 2500 containers then in the 1980s container ships capable of carrying between 3,000 and 4500 containers appeared and this number wasn't chosen randomly the size of the ships was limited by the capacity of the Panama Canal if companies had started building even bigger vessels back then they simply wouldn't have fit through the canal which would have made shipping Goods take far longer not to mention the price difference to give you an idea of how crucial the Panama Canal was for global trade all shipping was adjusted to fit the size of the Canal's original locks this is how the container ship standard came into being panamax according to this standard the size of ships is limited by the width and length of the existing lock Chambers the Canal's water depth and the height of the bridge of the Americas if a ship doesn't meet these criteria it can't pass through the Panama Canal effectively cutting it out of global trade and that's not all the Panama Canal has also shaped the design of 3:01 military and passenger ships but global trade ties kept expanding and there was a need to build bigger ships they were called the post panamax ships that didn't meet the panamax standard building them came with risks even the draft or How deep the ship sank in the water was a problem not to mention the capacity of ports and the entire infrastructure that might not be able to handle such sizes plus shippers had to rethink global trade routes to avoid the Panama Canal but the demand from the global market made post panamax a reality and by 2000 ships carrying up to 8,000 containers were sailing around the world by 2006 the third generation of post panamax container ships had already been introduced and was in active use these ships had a capacity of 11,000 to 14,500 containers they were called very large container ships because they exceeded the Panama Canal size limits this new class required specialized Port INF structure since the ships had a 4:01 draft of more than 49 ft and were 22 containers wide the number of ports that could accommodate vlcs was limited especially those situated in river deltas at this point it was already clear that big container ships could become a big problem but the temptation to carry as much cargo as possible in one trip was just too great to not miss out on profits from these new bigger container ships the Panama Canal had to adjust its expansion started in 2007 and and after several delays the new locks open for commercial traffic on June 26th 2016 the expanded Panama Canal can now accommodate ships of larger sizes and that's when even bigger container ships started appearing the dimensions of the neop panamax or new panamax were tailored to fit the new locks 1,400 ft in length 180 ft in width and 60 ft in depth and here's where things get really interesting ships of the latest generation carrying anywhere from 18,000 to 25,000 containers the ones that don't 5:02 deliver Goods to the US they're called ulc which stands for ultr large containership in fact the technology for building larger container ships has always been there but this bigger container ship also has to be financially viable and that took time larger ships exist today because the industry has adapted and made them possible on August 14th 2021 when everase one of the largest container ships in the world left the port of yanan and carefully made its way through the South China Sea it set a record until that day no other ship had carried such a large number of cargo containers 2,710 in total a ship 1312 ft long and 22 ft wide is massive but today dozens of container ships of similar size are sailing the Seas there are over 50 ships with a capacity of 21,000 containers or more almost all of them were built in The Last 5 Years years and even more 6:00 ships are being created right now the biggest container ship Humanity has built so far is MSC Arena it's not easy to fully comprehend its size at first so let's try a comparison at nearly 1300 ft long this ship is about the same size as the Empire State Building if you laid the skyscraper on its side without the Spire New York's most famous building is 1250 ft tall or 1,450 ft if you include the Spire as for the width MSC arena is rough ly the same size as the Empire State Building from North to South 200 ft it's even a little wider than the skyscraper it's 187 ft the number of containers carried by the ship is equivalent to the number of visitors the Empire State Building hosts at its observation deck in 2 and 1/2 days and here perhaps it's time to answer the question why is one big really huge container ship more cost effective than several smaller ones after 2008 carriers faced both a drop in shipping costs and a steady increase in 7:00 their base expenses this pushed profitability to its lowest point and sometimes companies even started losing money they had to find a way to cut cost in order to ensure higher profits with the same Revenue levels building larger ships turned out to be the solution if you carry more containers at once it lowers Transportation costs it's convenient another way to cut costs is by reducing fuel consumption which really helps carriers fuel can make up as much as 60% of total oper in expenses and by using a bigger vessel you end up using less fuel to carry one container it's simply cheaper which makes it more profitable carriers with big container ships have a Competitive Edge because they offer more space on their ships at lower prices competitors with smaller vessels don't do this so they get chosen less often also larger volumes make the carrier more attractive to Ports ports can expect to grow their business if they land a deal with such carriers and to get the deal they're often ready to 8:01 offer better rates or even discounts big ships also win in that it takes less steel and crew to manage one ship carrying 10,000 containers than two ships carrying 5,000 containers each but is it really true that all these huge ships don't make it to the US let's take a look at some specific examples MK mckenny mhler the first triple eClass vessel from MK line when it was launched in 2013 it had the largest capacity of any ship and was the longest container ship in the world and and here's what its working route looks like another ship the Costco shipping Universe with a capacity of 21237 containers is the largest cargo ship in China this container vessel built in 2018 by China State ship building Corporation is 1312 ft long and 192 ft wide it's a massive thing and here's what its route looks like now take a look at the everal lot a container ship that as of 2022 was the largest in the world the vessel was 9:01 launched in June 2022 it's 203 ft wide and 1312 ft long its capacity is 24,4 containers here's its working route sure these are just some of the biggest container ships I won't list them all the fact remains all their routes are between Asia and Europe and there are several reasons for this first most us ports aren't big enough to handle the largest container ships it's really important that chips don't run ground in some ports the biggest ships actually sit so low in the water that they touch the bottom and slide through the mud instead of floating above it only a few ships at the capacity close to 20,000 containers have ever docked at us ports but that's more of an exception than the rule for example in April 2020 the Port of Oakland welcomed its largest container ship in history with a capacity of 19,000 containers the vessel is called MSC Anna this was a unique special event not just regular shipment due to numerous canceled trips between East Asia and the west coast of the us a 10:01 lot of empty containers piled up in Southern California and the ship came to pick them up that's the only reason and here's the second point the terminal of the sea port needs to be able to load cargo onto the ship and unload it from the ship while the railroads and trucks serving the port must have enough capacity so even if a giant ship makes it to an American Port chances are there won't be a crane that can unload the top containers they're just too high one solution might be not to fully load such container ships but then the whole point of using them disappears of course the port can upgrade itself to handle huge ships but that's always linked to problems for example to deepen the waterways the Port Authorities need to constantly remove sent from the sea floor this in turn harms marine ecosystems and local fishing other costly Investments are needed from an economic social and environmental perspective and since a giant usually stays in Port for 36 to hours it also 11:00 increases the port's congestion by comparison smaller ships require much less time typically from 7 to 30 hours so what's the outcome since giant container ships need a lot of time to unload and load it's not just possible to rebuild one port to handle them the work there would basically stop and the port would get way too few ships basically from an economic standpoint it's totally nonsense so we'll have to modernize a bunch of ports on both the East and West coasts but that was I guess the second point then there's also the third point we should mention the route of the giant ships the biggest vessels are limited in where they can go because they're super vulnerable to storms for example these container ships don't want to cross the Pacific Ocean because the storms there are way too intense medium-sized container ships sometimes lose hundreds of containers in the Pacific it all comes down to how these very big and wide ships handle the waves when they directly hit a sequence of waves they can experience some something called parametric rolling I 12:01 won't get into the details or complicated formulas but basically because of the length of the ship it'll balance on the wave's peak with the middle part while the bow and Stern hang in the air this creates a huge tilt and an equally huge risk of cap sizing oh and I almost forgot there are also Bridges you see when container ships are heading to Ports sometimes they have to pass under bridges and a lot of these bridges are too low now for really big ships to get under them a simple example is the term Bayon Max introduced by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey it defines a container ship that can pass under the relatively low clearance of the Bayon bridge over the Kil van Cole the Waterway between New Jersey and Staten Island container ships need to use this route to reach the four largest container terminals in the port in 2021 the CMA CGM Marco Polo became the largest container ship to visit the east coast of the US this vessel carries 16,000 containers and it was able to 13:00 dock only thanks to a $1.7 billion project that's how much it took to raise the roadway of the Bayon Bridge so yeah it's not just about the cost for Port upgrades Bridges need modernization too by the way they need to be not only lifted but also protected because a collision with a large container ship could seriously damage any of the bridges simply because modern ships are twice as big as the ones from the days when many US Bridges were built experts actually think that Bridges might might just fall apart if they get hit by a modern container ship and these aren't just baseless claims the Francis Scott keybridge in Baltimore collapsed in March 2024 and it fully met safety standards but those standards were set long before the era of large container vessels so the situation with the US is pretty straightforward but can container ships get even bigger let's find out right now there are no less than 186 mgx 24 ships in operation plus a few smaller m gx23 vessels over the last few years 14:02 these ships have become the backbone of trade between Asia and Europe slowly but steadily pushing other container ships out the megax fleet now makes up half of the world's container Fleet at the same time if you look at the list of the largest container ships in the world you'll notice that all of them are about 1312 ft long or a little less and around 200 ft wide and that's more or less the upper limit for these ships today people are just building more container ships but they're not getting any bigger themselves from a physical standpoint there's nothing stopping this though there's a certain number of containers that can be stacked on top of each other on a ship after that the bottom row will just break under the weight the containers are also secured to stay in place and these systems have upper limits on how much cargo they can safely hold so you can build an even bigger ship but it'll face issues with loading the price of oil plays a role here too which is current Curr L very high and the largest container ships 15:02 require huge amounts of fuel and of course infrastructure to accommodate ships much larger than the biggest ones today a massive overhaul of the ports will be needed and it's going to be incredibly expensive so expensive in fact that it just doesn't make sense basically you could say that the reason container ships probably won't get any bigger soon is directly related to why these Giants don't sail in the US in order for container ships with the capacity of over 25,000 containers to be feasible the economics and their operational model need to be changed right now all the economic models suggest a decrease in the number of containers and regulating the ship sizes they'll probably be carrying about 20,000 containers for example the daily operating cost difference between a ship with 23,000 containers and one with 20,000 is only around 1% so why bother with making them bigger breaking news 16:00 the big news from the past few days is that I couldn't make it to my hair stylist a ship with bad luck everyone heard about the ship everg given which once blocked the Suez Canal right it took a whole 6 days to free it and it seems like it was incredibly unlucky however there's another ship called ever forward that had even worse luck this giant vessel 1,95 ft long got stuck in the Chesapeake Bay for a month an absolute record for getting stuck the ship ran ground in around 25 ft of water after departing from the Port of Baltimore in 2022 and the causes of the incident remain unknown but it happened and rescuing the ship required an unbelievable amount of effort the first two attempts to pull the ship were unsuccessful which led to using barges to offload about 500 of the 5,000 containers on board a high tide also helped and the rescue ships eventually managed to pull the ever forward through 17:00 a new trench created by dredging the only thing that's reassuring is that unlike the incident with the ever given which caused serious disruptions to Global Supply chains the ever forward getting stuck in Maryland Waters didn't lead to any issues for shipping routes plus nobody was hurt and there was no damage or pollution as a result of the event in the end everything turned out fine record-breaking container ship here's another record and this time it's a more pleasant one the Shanghai ship research and design Institute has developed a design for a container ship with a capacity of 27,500 containers just imagine what a beast it'll be the exact size hasn't been disclosed yet but we do know a few things the ship called green sea lion will not only be able to carry tons of containers but will also have an improved hole design and dual fuel equipment powered by liquefied natural gas which meets International standards for reducing the carbon footprint it'll also be able to connect to shore power 18:01 which is another eco-friendly feature when it comes to sheer capacity the ship turns out to be incredibly costeffective right now only a few major carriers including MSC o and one have broken the 24,000 container barrier and it's green sea lion that'll offer the best shipping conditions with its 27,500 containers and yes these Giants will obviously not fit anywhere right now such vessels are mainly used on routes between Asia and Europe where their size is limited by the Suez Canal parameters and the ports in northern Europe however the new project green sea lion promises to take shipping efficiency to a whole new level offering 15% more capacity compared to existing container ships that sounds promising the important thing is not getting stuck somewhere necessary modification as you've probably figured out many countries are racing to build gigantic container ships and some of 19:01 them are so massive that I'll give you an example to help you understand just how much they can carry the height of some cargo ships can reach the height of a 20-story building plus they can carry so many containers that if you stack them on top of each other they would reach the stratosphere overall this all sounds pretty solid and it's clear that only a handful of ports can take on such monsters but while it's a big problem for the US Europe is rapidly expanding its ports and boosting its trade capabilities among the ports that can currently accommodate container ships are felix stow and Southampton in the UK however other ports are also actively investing large amounts of money into modernization to handle such vessels in fact they're even constructing specialized ports for these huge ships for example the UK has built a new Port costing nearly $2 billion 20 m east of the old London ports London's Gateway funded by Dubai's DP world is installed 24 super modern cranes 450 ft tall 20:02 designed to handle containers on the massive triple eClass ships the same ones I was talking about in terms of capacity and size 2 200 people worked on the construction of the port and the government promised to create 36,000 new jobs the New Port can handle seven giant triple eClass container ships at once and other ports like Felix stow and Southampton there are facilities for servicing the largest ships but they're Limited but then there's London Gateway the annual capacity of the port is 3.5 million containers and the throughput in 2021 was 1.8 million containers and it keeps growing problems in the ports but let's get back to the US and their ship problems American ports handle 40% of the containers imported into the country and 30% of exports so you see the responsibility is huge however in 2021 California hit a record Rec high for delays and ports due to 21:00 issues in the supply chain more than 100 ships couldn't unload containers off the coast of Los Angeles and Long Beach which are already the busiest ports in the country to give you a sense of how bad the traffic jam was many ships had to wait for their turn out at se for several weeks sometimes on top of that the environment and public health were under threat because of the engines running non-stop even without factoring in the massive delay ports generate more than 100 tons of smog and other pollutants each day then throw in another hundred ships running on diesel and parked by the shore for weeks it's a pure anti- ecology combo so what's the problem here well it's pretty clear the ports couldn't keep up with the higher demand for imported products on top of that there was a shortage of containers trucks drivers and warehouse workers partly due to the Corona virus pandemic to fix things negotiations were held not just with the ports but also with Freight Carriers rail companies operators and Retail chains even large corporations 22:01 including Walmart FedEx and UPS jumped in to speed up the unloading and delivery of goods to stores so basically you get the point there are serious problems with container ships in the US hope they'll sort it out someday you owe me a like see you later [Music]

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