Posted on 01/08/2012 9:23:20 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Longer than the Eiffel Tower, wide as a football pitch and with the capacity for more than 11,000 trucks, the first of a record-breaking fleet of giant ships has completed its maiden voyage to China.
Onboard the Berge Everest was around 350,000 tonnes of iron ore, according to industry sources, enough to make the steel for more than three Golden Gate bridges. After unloading its cargo at the port of Dalian, the vessel has started its journey home to Brazil, it emerged last week.
The ship's arrival was momentous, because of both its scale and the scale of the gamble by Vale, the world's biggest iron ore producer, and the wider shipping industry. Brazilian miner Vale is bringing about a sea change in the shipping industry with its $8bn (£5bn) roll-out of an unprecedented fleet of 35 massive iron ore carriers, including the Berge Everest.
Classed as very large ore carriers (VLOCs), the biggest of the "Valemax" fleet boasts a 400,000 dead weight tonnage (dwt) – the amount a ship can safely carry – which far exceeds the 364,000dwt of the previous record holder.
Vale's new fleet underscores a much wider trend to boost the capacity of carriers of dry bulk commodities such as iron and coal.
Capesize ships – megaships so-called because they were too big to travel through the Panama or Suez Canals so went via Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope – have crept up from around 120,000dwt in the early 1980s to closer to the 180,000dwt mark in the past decade.
The logic is simple: economies of scale. The trend has helped to keep shipping costs at astoundingly low levels for the loads involved. Now, with Vale, we are seeing a jump in the movement to supersize, albeit with some
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Why didn’t they just drop the stuff off at Newark, NJ and then by train to Pittsburgh? Oh, that’s right, we don’t do that sort of thing anymore/SARCASM
Large ships amaze and awe me, but think of the loss of product if one sinks.
Any idea of how long it takes to load this ship?
I know nothing about ships or shipping but if the load time becomes a significant part of the overall transit time, you may be better off with two smaller ships.
Can it still be hijacked by a gaggle of Somali pirates in the usual manner or will they need a trampoline to get on board?
Silly me... these buggers will never get near Somali territory. The Somalis would have to migrate to one of the Capes. :-)
Fill 3 of them up with iron ore, half-way through the Suez Canal, sink them. Maybe that’s what the Chinese built them for?
oh geez, that is funny...lol!
Don’t need to have more than one - they can’t fit into the locks drive up to either side of the canal sink one and the whole shibang is closed for a good long time especially if the think is scuttled with a full load of dirt scrap or ore.
I’m guessing they load at multiple stations at the same time given the size - on the carrier we loaded the stations on a side plus two topside but had a hefty crew for this I’m assuming multiple cranes or conveyors likely from both sides with barges & cranes on the seaward side and conveyors and cranes landward.
My question is how many ports are there that can accept her to load as you wouldn’t want to load her in a deep anchorage because then it would be barge and crane only and take forever.
China opposes the construction of these ships by Vale. Vale will ultimately build 38 Valemax ships for $8 billion. They reduce China’s negotiating leverage in purchasing Brazilian iron ore. China’s favors its own shipping industry, which has smaller tonnages and is therefore less efficient and more costly per tonne. Brazil must reduce transportation costs, however, since Australia has a big distance, and therefore cost, advantage. This is against a backdrop of declining charter rates since the financial crisis. This is a gutsy plan for Vale.
I hate writers.
This ship is perhaps the biggest “bulk carrier”. There are larger container ships, and there have been oil tankers that dwarf this ship.
Super Size Me!
The world’s biggest engine is the Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C. It is a turbo charged two stroke diesel engine, and it is the most powerful and efficient low revolution engine in the world today. The Wartsila-Sulser is manufactured by the Aioi Works in Japan and is part of Japan’s Diesel United Ltd engine manufacturers. It is 89 feet long, 44 feet wide, and weighs 2000 tons.
These engines are built in 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 cylinder configurations. All the engines are straight or 'inline'. The diameter of each cylinder is 3 foot 2 inches with a stroke of 8 foot 2 inches. The 12 cylinder version weighs in at 2000 metric tons and delivers 90,000 horsepower at 100 revolutions per minute, with best fuel economy at 53,244 hp at 90 rpm. When I mention economy, the 14 cylinder engine for example with a displacement of 25,480 Liters ( 1.56 million cubic inches ) burns up 1,660 gallons of crude ("bunker") oil every hour.
http://www.boattest.com/resources/view_news.aspx?newsid=3055
That’sa big ship. To put it’s size in perspective, it is 8 times the tonnage of teh USS Missouri or RMS Titanic, and more than 4 times that of a supercarrier.
They don’t have to worry about Somali pirates. MILF and other Islamist pirates of Indonesia are another matter.
I wonder if its 300 ton crankshaft was made in one casting like an automobile crankshaft? And the lathe that ground its journals must be something too.
You are funny, trying to get this thing through there would be like putting a football in a coke bottle.
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