The Redemption of“Panamax Type”

Reporter Li Xiaochuan

The undocked M/V MSC Geneva is currently carrying out the finishing work in Shanghai Huarun Dadong shipyard. It is the world"s first container ship to undergo widening modification(including extension). Whether the sadness of the“declining aristocracy” can be brushed away by the widening modification of “MSC Geneva”?

The so-called panamax is a sort of large container ship specially designed for the Panama Canal lock.The breakthrough of design came out in 1988, when American President Lines (APL) launched five superpanamax ships. After that, shipping company operating super panama ships has become the normality. With the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, panamax capacity was “edged out”, and most of it was forced to enter regional lines. However, the bad luck was not over yet, large-scale container ship has already placed panama type into awkward situation, and the extension project of Panama Canal makes its outlook much bleaker.

In the game of Panamax type modification market, on September 28, 2014, the refitting project of extension and widening of Reederei NSB container ship was officially started. It is reported that three panamax ships of NSB will be refitted, they are M/V MSC Geneva of 4860 TEU (built in 2006), M/V Buxhai of 4860 TEU(built in 2005) and M/V MSC Carouge of 4549 TEU(built in 2007).

At the news conference, NSB said that the container loading capacity of the modified M/V MSC Geneva will be increased from 4860 TEU to 6300 TEU, with 20% increase in capacity and its energy efficiency design index (EEDI) is the same as newbuildings. That is to say, with the operating costs unchanged, the ship can carry more goods, and has higher stability. For this,Wang Zhirong , the Director of Technical Management Department of China Classification Society (CCS)said that it is certain that the stability will be improved after widening, because the ship stability margin and adjustment redundancy after widening are increased;as for energy efficiency, most container ships are presently reducing the sailing speed, this solution will make it possible to carry more containers while keeping the original energy consumption, that is to say, the comprehensive operation efficiency will be enhanced.

Overturning the previous sense of “bony”, whether the panamax type can make a successful breakthrough?LutzMüller, the former chief technical officer of NSB said that the core element of the innovation is to improve the efficiency of the ship. Widening modification has evidently increased the loading ability and the lateral stability of the ship. In addition, the sustainable development of shipping industry that is more important will be enhanced effectively, and the carbon emission per ton of transported good will be substantially reduced.

However, as opposed to NSB’s optimism about panama modification market, domestic shipyards and ship owners still have reservations. In addition to describing the modification project with words such as “is forced to” and “no choice”, they are concerned, under the current situation of bleak market, that the modified ship will in the end be replaced by even larger container ships. The chance of profit and additional investment are the elements they are mostly concerned about. Some shipyard managers will not consider to accept such projects due to low profit.

By exploring the starting point of NSB refitting project(extension and widening), it is found that perhaps it has something to do with aesthetic changes over half a century of the container ship. In the context of “being big is beautiful”, refit of the “mini” panamax ship type is feasible if the ship doesn"t want to be eliminated. NSB believes that modification of the existing ship is more flexible, and having 2 to 4 more rows of containers on the basis of the original type can be realized. “Buy a second-hand ship and then widen it, the cost is lower than ordering a new ship, and it is faster. In addition, refitting old ships instead of demolition is more environment friendly than building a new one.” NSB company’s marketing strategy hopes that the industry find practical profit point on the refitting project. Bozidar Petrovic, the senior advisor of NSB said that we believe that the market potential of panamax refit is huge, and there is a large demand for the obtained special expert technology.