The world's biggest container ship, Ever Ace, continuing its maiden voyage, heading for Suez Canal soon

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

The Ever Ace, the largest container ship in the world, docked at the UK port of Felixstowe in Suffolk on Sunday morning.

The giant ship is the sister vessel of the Ever Given, which famously blocked the Suez Canal for six days in March. The Ever Ace is part of a new class of container ships, the Evergreen A-class, which can hold up to 23,992 cargo units. This is up from the 20,124 cargo units that the Ever Given, which is an Evergreen G-class ship, can carry.

There are eleven other mega container ships being built in the make of the Ever Ace, three of which could become operational this year. Taiwan-based shipping company Evergreen Marine, which owns the Ever Ace, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment for this story.

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According to the American Bureau of Shipping records, both ships are the same length, but the Ever Ace is wider and deeper. The Ever Given is 58.7 metres wide, slightly narrower than the Ever Ace's 63.1 metres. The Ever Given has a draught (or depth) of 15.9 metres in comparison to the Ever Ace's 16.4 metres.

The Ever Ace is now taking a two-day break at the Suffolk port and is set to depart for Rotterdam on Wednesday, per the BBC. She will then traverse the Suez Canal, which accounts for about 12% of the world's seaborne cargo trade.

This is the same route the Ever Given took when it got stuck, throwing the global supply chain into chaos that lasted for weeks even after the ship was freed. A logjam of more than 400 ships formed, despite other vessels having opted to abandon the Suez Canal and reroute, taking a massive detour around the southern tip of Africa.

It took almost a week of dredging and digging to get the massive Ever Given unstuck from the Suez, a costlyendeavor that prompted the Egyptian authorities to seize the Ever Given on April 13 and hold it for months.

The Ever Given finally ported at Rotterdam on July 29 with more than 20,000 containers on board, a full 106 days after it first got lodged in the waterway and after the ship's owner, Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, arrived at an undisclosed compensation agreement with the Suez Canal Authority.

News Source : https://www.businessinsider.co.za/trending/worlds-biggest-container-ship-ever-ace-maiden-voyage-2021-9