Still Green - Always Magenta

 Still Green

The combined fleets of Wallenius Lines and Wilh. Wilhelmsen have been operating their auto carriers jointly as Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean (WWO) since 2019. (They began to work co-operatively as early as 1999). Both companies maintain many other independent businesses such as logistics and ship managment and invest in non-shipping industries and did not merge. 

Although WWO acts as a single company, its 123 autocarriers are owned by either by Wallenius or Wilhelmsen. Ships used to maintain the traditional paint schemes of the two lines, depending on the owner: white superstructure over red hull of Wilhelmsen and white over green of Wallenius. Since 2019 the line has been repainting its ships in a new scheme of teal green over grey hull and white superstructure with a grey over teal funnel.

The only way to tell which line owns which ships was by the name. Wallenius ships are named for operatic characters and Wilhelmsen ships' names begin with the letter "T".

It was a bit of a surprise today (December 27) to see the Traviata appear at Pier 9C to unload RoRo machinery, while still wearing the white over green Wallenius colours. (The "T" name may or may not be significant as there are numerous operatic characters without "T" names, so why this one was chosen is unknown.)

The ship was built in 2019 by Tianjin Xingang, to the HERO class design used by both Wallenius and Wilhelmsen. It must have beeen one of the last - or indeed the last - ship to use the old Wallenius colour scheme. 

The 73,358 gt, 23,889 dwt ship, has a capacity of 7656 RT43 autos, and mounts a 320 tonne SWL stern ramp. As with most modern autocarriers it has no side ramp.

The ship will be five years of in 2024 and is thus will be due for an important classification survey and drydocking in late 2024 or early 2025. I expect the green paint to disappear at that time.

Always Magenta

Another combination of companies is ONE (Ocean Network Express) founded in 2016 by the three main Japanese container lines: NYK Line, MOL and K-Line. The joint venture operates ships, which are chartered in from the parent companies. Starting in 2018 new ships have been painted in the (startling) magenta hull colour. Some ships were ordered and delivered before the merger, and were renamed with ONE names and some existing ships have been repainted in the new scheme.

Most of the fifteen ships of the "Bird" class, built by Japan Marine United in Kure, starting in 2015,  were delivered with NYK prefixes and later renamed with ONE. However today's arrival, delivered in July 2019 was the last in the series and has always carried the ONE prefix, and the magenta hull paint.

The ship measures 146,694 gt, 138,611 dwt and is rated for 14,026 TEU. It was good to see the ship loaded to near capacity today [photo above] as it arrived from Colombo on THE Alliance's EC5 service. On its first arrival on June 6, 2023 [photo below] it carried boxes only three high. Today it was six to eight high.

The Traviata moved to Autoport at noon time to offload automobiles and will sail this evening. The ONE Cygnus is expected to sail over night for New York. 

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