Evergreen Orders Post-Panamax Vessels from MHI

The Evergreen Group has placed orders with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd in Japan for ten post-Panamax vessels, each with a capacity of 6,724TEU. The first vessel is due for delivery in September 2005 and subsequent vessels will be delivered at the rate of approximately four per year. To be known as S-class vessels, the new ships will be built under the GREENSHIP design concept proposed by Evergreen Group Chairman Dr Chang Yung-Fa. This involves taking a Odouble-hull approach to the fuel oil tanks to take environmental protection into consideration. Dr Chang comments: "We don¹t want fuel oil tanks to be located at the sides and at the bottom of the ships. If fuel oil tanks are located inside the hulls along the transverse bulkhead, damage to tanks and oil leakage incidents caused by grounding and collisions can be dramatically reduced." The S-types will be ideally suited to the Evergreen Group¹s Far East Europe services. They will also enable Evergreen to meet the Group¹s fleet reinforcement programme as well as replacement requirements. Vessels due to come into service by the end of 2007 will bring the fleet operated by the Evergreen Group to more than 170 vessels with a total capacity of 0.58 million TEU. With an overall length of 300 metres and a beam of 42.8 metres, the new S-type vessels will be the largest ships in the Evergreen Group-owned fleet. They are able to carry containers 17 rows athwartships on deck and 15 rows athwartships below deck and have 839 reefer plugs. They have a deadweight of 78,200 tonnes on a service draft of 14.2 metres. Each vessel has a single 10-cylinder Mitsubishi Sulzer 10RTA96C main engine developing 74,700bhp (54,900KW) to provide for a service speed of 25.3 knots.