From its base in Marseille, the CMA CGM Group has a diversified fleet of 460 vessels and they serve at 521 ports worldwide. The company’s latest acquisition to their fleet was christened GEORG FORSTER on July 11th, in Hamburg. The vessel was named after an 18th century naturalist and ethnologist George Forster who accompanied the famous James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific.
The christening took place in presence of Jacques R. Saadé, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CMA CGM Group and Mrs Christine Kuehne, the vessel’s godmother, and of many institutional and political representatives, partners and clients.
GEORG FORSTER was delivered on June 2nd. She is, with her 398 meters length and 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent containers capacity, the Group’s largest vessel. She is the second of 6 vessels of the same size series that will enter the fleet in 2015 and join the 460 vessels of the Group. The vessel is assigned to operate primarily in the east-west trade route between Northwest Europe and Asia, making port calls in 11 countries in all.
According to AlixPartner’s “2015 Container Shipping outlook”, by 2017, the number of mega-vessels, which transport more than 13,300 TEUs, is expected to double. The Asia and Northern Europe routes have shown a dramatic 32% increase of mega boxships since 2010.
