An erstwhile flagship of the Maersk empire has been the first in a series of sister ships to get a lashing upgrade to increase capacity.
In total, Maersk has earmarked twenty 18,340 teu sister ships to get lashing upgrades to add 736 teu of capacity, according to Alphaliner, including the installation of so-called Mickey Mouse ears (pictured) to the ships’ outer rows. The timing of the drydockings coincide with the ships’ ten-year class dry-docking.
First in the queue was the Maersk McKinney Moller, which spent five weeks at Qingdao Beihai Shipyard in northeast China over the summer and now is trading with a new nominal capacity of 19,076 teu. The ship is named after the group’s previous chairman who passed away in 2012.
The capacity increase operation via lashing upgrades is a relatively simple process compared to many other boxship expansion projects. Splash reported last month, for instance, on Hapag-Lloyd’s decision to boost seven middle-aged ships capacity by around 1,000 teu by cutting their superstructures in half (pictured below) and inserting a prefabricated section to raise the wheelhouse by two decks.
