International tensions, supply chain issues and pandemics have done little to stem the flow of container traffic. Just this week, Felixstowe has berth its biggest ever single-ship load. It’s the third time in two months that the record has been broken. A staggering figure of almost 28,000 TEU have come ashore from the MSC Amelia.
Felixstowe is at the top of a long list of UK intermodal ports, and continues to lead the way on volume of containers shipped. The extensive rail terminals are served by a short branch line from nearby Ipswich, and Network Rail is busy strengthening the regional infrastructure, primarily to cope with increased traffic from the port. The record berthing is due notice that those capacity enhancements are urgently needed, if the port is to further move away from road transport, and better cope with demand.
Rail ability handle bigger ships
Hutchison Ports have been quick to herald the news that Felixstowe has broken its own record for the most containers handled on a single ship for the third time in two months. The latest benchmark was set when a total of 27,961 TEU (‘twenty-foot-equivalent’ standard containers) were handled on the MSC Amelia which sailed from the port on 8 March 2022. Prior to that 25,852 TEU had been handled on the Moscow Maersk the previous week and 23,773 TEU were handled on the MSC Diletta on 12 January 2022. All three vessels are operated on the 2M Alliance Griffin/AE55 Far East Asia to North Europe service.
The figures for the TEU handled is larger than the listed capacity of the ship (per wikipedia, not currently the largest ship in the world either which is also smaller than the figure listed). I can only assume that is because the port is counting containers unloaded and also loaded. If every container was unloaded and every space replaced with a new one, then you could get a max 2 x the listed capacity (i.e. around 56k TEU for ships of this size).