Geest North Sea Line to Introduce New Ships

Geest North Sea Line will introduce two 804TEU vessels into service in the course of 2004. Wout Pronk, managing director of European shortsea and intermodal specialist Pronk made the announcement during his presentation "Getting closer to the customer", which he was delivering to delegates attending the Short Sea Europe seminar at Intermodal Transport & Logistics 2002 (ITL2002) in Rotterdam. The vessels will have more than twice the container capacity of those currently operated by Geest and will be far bigger than anything that has been used in the North Sea shipping trades before. They have been designed specifically to carry 45ft and heavy 20ft and 30ft containers and reflect the company's longterm commitment to the future of European shortsea and intermodal transport. Once in service, they will operate between Rotterdam and the UK East Coast. Pronk said: "Virtually every containership, deepsea or shortsea, is designed around 20ft and 40ft containers, nowadays with some 45ft capability, usually on deck. However, the growth of our own 45ft door-to-door business and increasing volumes of third-party dry bulk and tank container traffic required us to look afresh at ship design. "We have been helped considerably in our search for a suitable design by Jorg Kopping, a German shipowner with whom we are closely associated. He has worked tirelessly on this concept, talking to many shipbuilders. The result is an 804TEU vessel that enables us to cater for both 45ft containers and our quay/quay customers' heavy tank and bulk containers - 20 footers, 30 footers, 40 footers and some odd ball sizes in between - in an optimal way. Kopping is now in the process of ordering two vessels specifically for charter to Geest." Source: HK Law