Another batch of vessels of the German liner company Hapag-Lloyd is about to be “enlarged”.
Seven of Hapag-Lloyd’s approximately 10-year-old container vessels are on their way to China to be retrofitted at COSCO Shipping Heavy Industries (Zhoushan), where their capacity will be increased from 9,324 Twenty-feet Equivalent Units (TEUs) to approximately 10,200 TEUs, according to Alphaliner.
Back in 2023, Hapag-Lloyd had implemented a similar retrofit on seven other vessels at the Fayard shipyard in Denmark, increasing capacity from 8,004 TEUs to 9,210 TEUs.
In order to expand the transport capacity, the retrofit at that time included a number of adjustments: installing a higher lashing bridge to increase the stacking of containers by two levels; raising the cab by about 5 meters to add two levels of living area; lengthening the chimney to ensure that exhaust gases can be discharged, etc.
Hapag-Lloyd continues to promote the “enlargement” of old vessels, aiming to optimize the fleet capacity configuration and respond to changes in market demand. According to Alphaliner data, Hapag-Lloyd currently has a capacity of 2.356 million TEUs, ranking fifth in the world, with a total fleet of 300 vessels, of which 130 are owned vessels.