Eimskip - changes coming

 On about March 14 Eimskip, the Icelandic shipping company, announced that a Joint Venture with Ernst Russ has acquired an unidentified container ship to be delivered in the second quarter of this year. The 1025 TEU ship will be chartered to Eimskip for up to three years and renamed Bakkafoss. It will be placed on the line's North American Green Line route which runs from Reykjavik to Halifax and Portland Maine (acting as a New England feeder for CMA CGM from Halifax) and return via Halifax and Argentia, NL. 

Due to the added ship's size, Eimskip expects to reduce the number of ships on the Green route from  the current four to three while still maintaining what they call "system capacity" [I'm not sure I understand their arithmetic, nor how they hope to maintain a schedule]. This will mean the redeployment of two ships currently on the route. Almost certainly one of those will be the Canadian owned Vivienne Sheri D - which sailed from Halifax this morning, March 15, after waiting out weather. The gearless 10,965 gt, 12,640 dwt vessel was built by Naval Gijon SA in Spain in 2009. It has a capacity of 925 TEU including 200 reefer plugs. Intially named Pictor J it became Pictor in 2020.

Vivienne Sheri D at anchor March 14.

Of the other ships on the Green route, Lagarfoss 880 TEU and Selfoss 724 TEU are owned ships and will likely remain on the run, while the Skogafoss 698 TEU will likely be reassigned by another branch of  the Eimskip/Russ JV- Feederstar.

When the Picton, ON based Doornekamp Shipping Ltd acquired the Vivienne Sheri D in 2021, it was already chartered by Eimskip as the Pictor and  Doornekamp reportedly stated they would keep the ship with Eimskip for up to two years or so then transfer it to their own Transatlantic shipping operation. That operation, in coordination with Spliethoff, so far has only one ship, the Peyton Lynn C which runs into the Great Lakes seasonally.

So far Eimskip's published schedules are not showing any revision, but the second quarter of 2023 will soon be upon us and we will see how the Bakkafoss is slotted in.

Knowlegeable sources speculate that the Bakkafoss is currently sailing as the Elbsummer, built in 2009 and lengthened in 2014, now rated at 11,550 gt, 14,669 dwt. More on this ship later, if it appears in Halifax. 

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