The Colombo Express News

GEA equipped two Hapag-Lloyd container ships with the GEA marine Separator which it recently presented at SMM 2018 in Hamburg. The GEA marine Separators 50 and 90 are equipped with integrated direct drive technology. This GEA technology has been successfully used on the “Budapest Express” and “Colombo Express” for the last one and a half years. The two medium-sized container ships, each with roughly 8,750 TEU, are used in U.S.-China service transfers.The integration of the new separators with the ship machinery went smoothly…

Siegfried Schmerer already dreamed of becoming a captain as a young boy. Later, as a sailor on a coaster, he suffered from seasickness. Though he thought about giving up, he stuck with it and eventually worked his way up all the way to the bridge. After half a century at sea, Captain Schmerer will sail on his last voyage this September on board the Colombo Express. In Hapag-Lloyd Insights, he takes a look back at his career, such as at the long voyages to Australia in what was then the world’s largest general cargo ship or the 20-meter-high waves near the Azores.

Hamburg based shipping company Hapag-Lloyd plans for 24 of the largest containerships in its fleet to get new bulbous bows by 2016, with some of the vessels also pegged to be fitted with optimized propellers, ultimately enabling lower fuel consumption coupled with fewer emissions. “It’s as high as a truck, weighs about 250 [metric tons] and is a prominent feature at the very tip of the bow of modern container ships. This has little to do with aesthetics and much more to do with fuel efficiency,” Hapag-Lloyd said.

Two large containerships collided in the Suez Canal off Port Said at roughly 5:30 local time Monday morning. The Hapag-Lloyd’s Colombo Express, a 324-meter German-flagged containership, collided with 332-meter Singapore-flagged Maersk Tanjong, causing several dropped containers and a large gash in the Colombo Express’ bow. Both vessels remain afloat. A video of the collision is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ktwo-k-onk#t=198. The Suez Canal Authority reports it is investigating the incident and is working to recover the lost containers.

Colombo Express, the world’s largest containership at 1099 ft. (335 m) long, 141 ft. (43 m) wide, and able to carry 8,750 containers, was recently named. The patron of the new Hapag-Lloyd flagship was Christiane Krumnow, wife of the supervisory board chairman of TUI AG, Dr. Jürgen Krumnow. “Global container transport remains a growth market,” said Michael Behrendt, chairman of the executive board of Hapag-Lloyd AG. “Today’s volume of 71 million standard containers is forecast to grow to almost 91 million by 2008 – an increase of almost 30% or 20 million containers. With our fleet expansion program, we are well equipped to meet the challenges of the future and fully intend to continue to expand our market position." The ship was built at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea.