Algoma and MSC arrivals

 Among the arrivals and departures in Halifax today (December 5) there were two ships that attracted my attention.

A first time caller on the Mediterranean Shipping Company's INDUSA service to/from India is the Conti Courage. It is owned by the German company CONTI and apparently is on a charter to MSC. MSC is the world's largest container ship operator with about 790 ships and a capacity of more than 5.5 mn TEU. About two thirds of the ships are on charter - some for short term, where it is not practical to change their names. This ship is possibly one of those.

 The Conti Courage was built by Samsung, Geoje in 2005, as Hatsu Courage for charter to Hatsu Marine. The London, UK based container line Hatsu was merged into the Taiwanese Evergreen Marine Corp in 2007. The ship carried the Hatsu name and hull banner until 2017 when it became Conti Courage. (CONTI is the trading name for an independently operating company that has been owned by Claus-Peter Offen Container ships since 2017.)

The 90,449 gt, 106,984 dwt ship has a capacity of 8084 TEU including 7000 (700) reefers.It is now eastbound from US ports of Charleston, Savannah, Norfolk, Baltimore and New York. So far it is scheduled to sail via the Mediterranean, Suez and the Red Sea to India.

The second arrival is a ship that was once a frequent caller under its original name, but has not been seen here in several years. Built in 2000 by Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, it is a Panamax self-unloading bulk carrier of 41,428 gt, 70,037 dwt. It was built to the same design as two ships for CSL (Sheila Ann and CSL Spirit). The ship offloads via a 59m boom with a 20m telescoping extension that can slew 135 degrees from midships, It can move coal at a rate of 4,000 tonnes per hour and ore at 6,000 tonnes per hour.

Its first owners. the Egon Oldendorff Group, named the ship Sophie Oldendorff and it joined the CSL self-unloader pool, and was put to work carrying coal to Nova Scotia and exporting aggregates and gypsum to US east coast ports. 

The brand new Sophie Oldendorff at the National Gypsum pier in Bedford Basin. National Gypsum has since been rebranded as Gold Bond.

 In 2019 the Algoma Central Corporation acquired Oldendorff Carriers' interest in the CSL pool along with three ships, among them the Sophie Oldedorff, which they renamed Algoma Victory. The CSL pool was founded in 1993 and included the Torvald Klaveness Group, which left the pool in 2015. Following the Oldendorff transaction Algoma owned about 40% and CSL Americas the remainder of the CSL pool. 

Before arriving today the Algoma Victory delivered a cargo of coal from Columbia to Point Tupper, NS November 12-15, then loaded aggregates at Auld's Cove November 17-20. It delivered that cargo to Cape Canaveral, FL, November 29-December 1 and returned in ballast to Halifax to load at Gold Bond gypsum. It anchored in Bedford Basin today to wait for CSL Tacoma to complete loading. That ship was also in last week, sailing November 29, and made a quick turn around trip to Portsmouth, NH.

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