World’s largest boxship, featuring 24 rows across, is delivered

Shipping newswire Splash247 reports that yesterday shipping line MSC retook the “operator of the largest box ship in the world” crown, following the launch of the 24,000 teu Gulsun, the first to feature 24 rows across. Containership operators have continued to steadily increase capacity of their ships by giving them extra width and higher container stacks, while in terms of length, 400 metres now appears to be the upper limit, which is much the same as the Emma Maersk, launched in 2006 as the first ULCV – but that has nearly 10,000 teu less capacity. More recent ship designs led Alphaliner to introduce a new vessel size: the megamax.