Where the twain shall meet

 "East is east and west is west..." but the twain can meet in Halifax, when the two container terminals, under common PSA management, arrange for two ships to cross tracks. THE Alliance's EC5 service calls in Halifax both eastbound and westbound, and to ensure that there are no delays, the Southend Gateway terminal can take a ship that would normally call at Fairview Cove when that facility is also handling a ship.

Today, March 7 saw the Hyundai Courage arriving on the westbound EC5 run, from Cai Mep, Vietnam (January 29), Singapore (February 1-2), Colombo (February 6-7), Suez (February 15-16), berthing as usual at Fairview Cove.

As presently configured Fairvew Cove can accommodagte only one ship of this size at a time, but can devote its three cranes the ship.  The 95,681 gt, 99,052 dwt Hyundai Courage, built in 2008 by Hyundai HI, Ulsan has a capacity of 8,562 TEU.

When THE Alliance was formed by Hapag-Lloyd, Ocean Network Express (ONE) and Yang Ming, Hyundai Merchant Marine was in poor finanacial shape, and was only allowed provisional membership until it was on sound footing. The South Korean government stepped in to stabilize the company, now known as HMM Co Ltd. It is now a full member of the group and is looking to privatise. The company operates about 26 ships with a dozen on order.

The westbound EC5 ship is MOL Charisma which also arrived this morning, but tied up at Pier 41, where it is difficult to see from the shore.

 The ship is a 86,692 gt, 90,390 dwt vessel with a capacity of 9060 TEU, including 630 reefers. Due to its size, it is just about as large a ship as can be accommodated at Fairview Cove, and depending on its water draft, it might not have clearance under the harbour bridges. On a previous visit in August 2022, it also docked at PSA Halifax Gateway.

MOL Charisma arriving August 30, 2022.

As stated the ship is on the eastbound leg of the EC5 run, from New York (February 17-19), Savannah (February 21-23), Jacksonville (February 24-25), Norfolk March 4-5). Halifax is its last North American stop before heading to Asia via Suez.

PSA Halifax Gateway (Southend terminal) was also handling the 1145 TEU Tropic Hope at Pier 42, using the terminal's smaller cranes.

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