Alphaliner’s latest report said that European container carriers can use more of their overall capacity to carry reefers.
MSC has the highest reefer capacity, with 496,200 reefer plugs in the 746 ships the Swiss-Italian market leader operates. MSC has grown its reefer capacity in tandem with its aggressive vessel acquisitions.
Back in April 2022, Maersk was in the top position, despite the fact that MSC had overtaken the Danish shipping company as the world’s largest container carrier in early January 2022.
When comparing reefer capacities on a year-on-year basis, the 12.1% increase for MSC is clearly related to its overall 11.8% fleet growth. Maersk lost its top reefer position to MSC as the Danish line has reduced its overall fleet by 2.5% since April 2022.
The percentage of slots available for plugged-in reefer boxes hovers above 20% for MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd. This compares to values from 15.5% (HMM) to 17.3% (Evergreen) for their Asian counterparts.
Alphaliner stated, “There is an obvious reason for this noticeable difference: In the past, all big European carriers ordered some newbuildings with an extra high number of reefer plugs, since these ships were specifically designed to be operated on fruit-oriented or other reefer-heavy Latin America service.”
ZIM realised the biggest growth in reefer capacity, at nearly 26%, which is in line with its 26.3% overall fleet expansion.
Hapag-Lloyd is the only carrier with a proportionally larger increase in reefer capacity than in its total fleet. The German container line has been the latest carrier to take delivery of newbuildings with a high reefer capacity as the ships were specifically designed to be deployed in services to/from Latin America.
Since July 2022, Hapag-Lloyd has added five 13,312 TEU sister vessels to its fleet. Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries is set to deliver the sixth and final ship in this series, the Buenaventura Express, in June. These ships are fitted with 2,220 reefer plugs, the highest number of reefer connections on any single container vessel. The addition of these ships has grown Hapag-Lloyd’s number of reefer plugs by 4.7% since April 2022 despite a very small 0.4% overall fleet growth.
Four more high-reefer 13,000 TEU ships built by China’s New Century Shipbuilding are scheduled to join Hapag-Lloyd’s fleet from October.
Martina Li
Asia Correspondent
