More Weather, More Boxes

 Thursday's heavy snow vanished over night Saturday / Sunday (December 11-12) as another storm blew through with thunder, lightning, wind and heavy rain. Snow removal is a huge headache for container terminals, and it is a time consuming and costly operation to clear and dispose of the white stuff. However when rain washes it away for you, operations can get back to normal very quickly.

PSA Halifax was wall to wall with three ships alongside Sunday morning December 12. MSCLeigh took the centre berth with Eimskip's Vivienne Sheri D at Pier 41 (right in photo) and ZIM's feeder Taipei Trader at Pier 42 (left in photo).

MSC Leigh arrived from Montreal December 11 to top off  before setting out for Valencia and Barcelona on MSC's Canada Express 2 service.

Built in 2006 by Daewoo Mangala the ship was launched as Buxtime but was delivered as MSC Leigh. It is a 50,963 gt, 63,411 dwt ship with a capacity of 4884 TEU including 560 reefers.

Things were also busy at Fairview Cove, with NYK Constellation arriving in the morning of December 11, and sailing mid-morning today, Sunday December 12.

NYK Constellation outbound with the pilot boat Capt. E.T. Rogers in attendance, bound for Southampton.

NYK Constellation is on THE Alliance's North Europe - North America AL5 service, eastbound. The ship was built by Hyundai Ulsan in 2007 and is a 55,534 gt, 65,919 dwt vessel with a capacity of 4922 TEU including 330 reefers.

As soon as the NYK Constellation was clear of the berth, the Hyundai Faith began to move in. It had arrived late yesterday afternoon, December 11 and spent the night at anchor in Bedford Basin.

The HMM ship (Hyundai Merchant Marine rebranded itself as HMM in 2020) was built by - wait for it - Hyundai, Samho in 2008. The 95,681 gt, 98,967 dwt ship has a capacity of 8562 TEU. It is on THE Alliance's EC5 Asia-North America run and arrived directly from Singapore.

 

All was quiet in the rest of the harbour, but was considerably brightened in the "grey ship" zone, where HMCS Montreal was showing off its new, bright blue, anti-fouling hull paint.

 

The ship is perched on the Syncrolift, an elevator - like platform that was built to lift ships (including submarines) out of the water, using banks of electric motors (the light blue objects), all carefully synchronised as to speed. The facility is being upgraded to increase its capacity for the future drydockings of new frigates (not yet built), but it does not have the capability of lifting the very heavy Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels. They will have to be drydocked in Newfoundland or Quebec, or on a semi-submersible barge.

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Container Feeders

As container ships get larger all the time, the ships calling in Halifax keep getting bigger too. However "small" container ships are also important and operate where cargo volumes do not warrant large ships. The smaller ships also work as feeders to gather up cargo and deliver it to hub ports for larger ships to load. They often have cargo cranes since some small ports do not have container cranes.

ZIM operates a feeder service between Halifax and its hub port of Kingston, Jamaica. The ships also call in New York, so provide a "short sea" service also for cargo from Halifax. Called the Canada Feeder Express (CFX) it currently works with two ships, Contship Leo and Taipei Trader. Both are familiar calllers by now  - the latter ship arrived today, November 20,  lightly loaded, from Kingston.

 

The ship has a capacity of 1102 TEU and that is considered "small" by today's standards. When container services started in Halifax fifty years ago, a 1,000 TEU ships was considered to be a giant! [See tomorrow's post for more on that.]

Meanwhile, anchored in Bedford Basin there is another "smaller" container ship - this one with a capacity of 2345 TEU (or 2339 depending on the source) including 500 reefers. Molly Schulte arrived from Hamburg, and although unscheduled, appears to be working for HAPAG-Lloyd exclusively. The green containers are marked for UASC - United Arab Shipping Co - the majority owner of HAPAG-Lloyd. HAPAG-Lloyd ships usually call in Halifax as part of THE Alliance.

 [Notice the free fall lifeboat partially deployed over the stern.]

Built by Yangfan Group, Zhoushan, China, it is a 27,279 gt, 30,263  dwt vessel equipped with three 45 tonne cranes. It is a most unusual size of ship for Halifax - midway between the 1,000TEU or less feeders and the more usual "liner" types which start at about 4,500 TEU, and do not carry cranes

The ship will remain at anchor until Monday, when it will move in to Fairview Cove.

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Three Arrivals, but all is not well

 Despite grim statistics for seaborne trade on the North Atlantic routes there were three container ship arrivals today, one for Fairview Cove and two for PSA Halifax. 

Fairview's was the well known Atlantic Sun, one of the five ConRo sisters operated by the Grimaldi Group's Atlantic Container Line on their weekly service to and from North Europe.

The current weakness of transatlantic trade is evident from the relatively few containers visible on the ship's deck. ACL however benefits from RoRo trade, and I have noted large numbers of cars arriving on these ships recently

Atlantic Sun arrived from Baltimore and will sail tonight for Liverpool on the eastbound leg of its run.

The two ships for PSA Halifax arrived at the same time, with Taipei Trader going first.

Tugs Atlantic Cedar (forward) and Atlantic Willow prepare to turn the Taipei Trader off PSA Halifax.

The ship and its sister Tampa Trader operate the weekly "Canada Florida Express" service for ZIM, which works as a feeder from Halifax to the US and ZIM's Kingston, Jamaica hub.  They are 1102 TEU (including 220 reefer) ships of 9932 gt, 13,063 dwt, built in 2014 by Jiangsu Newyangzi Shipbuilding in Jiangjiang, China, equipped with two 45 tonne cranes. Taipei Trader carried the name Cap Avatele from 2014 to 2016.

The third ship in was MSC Eleni on its second visit to Halifax. The first was on January 11 when it was westbound to Montreal.

Atlantic Fir has taken the forward position while Atlantic Oak (not visible) has moved to the starboard quarter to assist in turning the ship.

The ship is on MSC's longstanding transatlantic service, which has just started to call in Halifax to top off or decant cargo to reduce draft for the St.Lawrence River. It is now eastbound again and will top up with available cargo from Halifax.

MSC Eleni dates from 2004 when it was built by Hanjin Heavy Industry and Construction Co Ltd in Busan. The 54,881 gt, 68,254 dwt ship has a capacity of 5060 TEU including 400 reefers.

Unlike the transpacific trade which has clogged ports such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, container volume on the Atlantic has dropped off the cliff. The dearth of cargo has caused THE Alliance partner HAPAG-Lloyd to  "blank", "void" or cancel sailings altogether. Now they have announced the cancellation of one service altogether. The AL1 route is the victim of the downturn. That left only the ATA service calling in Halifax, but HAPAG-Lloyd announced today that Halifax has been added to the AL5 service which is a North Europe to North America West Coast via Panama. As first port in and last port out this keeps Halifax in a good position. However reliability will still be a question if ships are delayed for days or weeks by west coast port congestion.

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Odd goings on

 It was a day for some non-typical activity in the harbour. The ZIM feeder ship Taipei Trader (see yesterday's post) moved from Pier 36 to anchorage in Bedford Basin. 

The ship appears to be fully loaded, so must be either getting a repair or waiting out a schedule. ZIM seems to have a lot of empty boxes in Halifax, so maybe it is hauling some of those away.

The newly delivered CCGS Jean Goodwill moved from the Bedford Institute to Pier 9C where a crane lifted off a large cylinder and placed it on a truck. The cylinder looked like a stern roller, but was secured on deck when the ship arrived. (See previous post)

There was another unusual arrival at Pier 9C, the factory stern trawler Mersey Venture.

The attractive vessel was built in 1988 in Norway (started by Tangen Verft, and completed by Langsten Slip, Tomrefjord). It is a 2337 gt freezer trawler, usually engaged in the shrimp fishery for Mersey Seafoods Ltd of Liverpool, NS. The shrimp fishing grounds are in the far north, off Greenland, and trips can take up to two months. However its recent track shows it coming from the Gulf of Maine, headed for its home port of Country Harbour, NS. Its visit to Halifax must represent a change of plan of some sort.

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Three's Company at PSA Halifax

 The benefit of the recently completed pier extension at PSA Halifax is not restricted the Ultra size (10,000 TEU and larger) container ships. Today the terminal accommodated three ships at once and even a fourth for a short time.

The largest ship was ZIM Shekou a 4250 TEU vessel, which tied up between berths 41 and 42, leaving enough room for Oceanex Sanderling at the RoRo ramp to also work containers. That still left lots of room at the extension for the 1102 TEU ZIM feeder Taipei Trader.

Not long after it finished work, it moved to Pier 36 (also now within PSA's area) to allow Eimskip's Pictor to tie up at the extension. There is no crane at pier 36 now, so the  ship could not work any cargo there.

I am not aware if the Port will be naming the new PSA extension Pier 43, or just spreading out the number 41 and 42 to cover the whole length of the pier.

The bow of ZIM Shekou is just visible under the crane at the left, at what was originally pier 42, leaving lots of room for Taipei Trader or a much larger ship.

The wonderful walkway on the breakwater and pier extension is inexplicably still not open to the public.

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PSA full steam - plus (revision)

 PSA Halifax was working two ships today, with lots of room at its newly expanded pier.

At pier 41 it was MSC Martina in from Sines, Portugal. A fairly typical MSC ship (generally older than average) it was launched by Samsung, Koje in 1993 as Hansa Atlantic, but delivered as Maersk Hong Kong. It only carried that name until 1997 when it became MSC Martina. It has a capacity of 3398 TEU, including 150 reefers and measures 37,398 gt, 43,346 dwt.

Although reports are that MSC is not yet fully committed to calling Halifax, it certainly appears to be having a major impact with PSA's laydown area chockablock with MSC boxes. Perhaps MSC Martina is also acting as a "sweeper" gathering up stranded boxes from the previous service disruptions.

Meanwhile PSA's largest customer, ZIM, had their feeder Taipei Trader working at pier 42.

With Tampa Trader, they operate a weekly service to ZIM's Kingston, Jamaica hub via New York.

See previous references: http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2020/06/trading-closer-to-home.html

In an update from yesterday's post, Boreas was loading at Pier 28. 

From the white colour of the dust the load appeared to be wood pellets.

Revision: The ship loaded grain for Cuba.

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A run on tankers and a ZIM feeder

There seems to be a real run on Algoma tankers right now, which is odd in view of the lack of demand for petroleum products. Perhaps the large tank farm that used to be the Imperial Oil refinery is an attractive storage place for fuel that no one wants. Algoscotianova sailed this afternoon, Algocanada is in port and Algonorth is due tomorrow morning.

Algoscotianova lets its lines go from Imperial Oil.

Algocanada awaits its turn at anchor.

ZIM's feeder service brought in Taipei Trader from New York.

Built by Jiangsu Yangzijiang in 2014 with its present name, it carried the name Cap Avatele from 2014 to 2016. A 99332 grt, 13,063 dwt ship it has a capacity of 1102 TEU, including 220 reefers and has a pair of 45 tonne cranes.

Port activity seems to be keeping up with ship visits, but tonnages may be well down.  Also the number of auto imports is down. The cars unloaded at pier 9C by the Grand Diamond on April 6 are now being moved by truck to Autoport. http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2020/04/autos-and-more-autos.html

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