31 March 2011
Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades hosted its largest cargo ship to date on March 29: the MSC Maeva - 1,066-feet long and 89,954 gross registered tons in weight, spanning roughly the size of an aircraft carrier.
The Mediterranean Shipping Co. mega-vessel arrived at the seaport carrying freight from northern Europe to southern Florida, the Broward County port announced.
Previously, the largest container ships to call at Port Everglades were part of an MSC vessel class that measures 997 feet long and weighs 73,819 gross registered tons.
The larger MSC Maeva and her sister ships , MSC Lucy and MSC Charleston, can carry up to 8,089 TEUs, or 20-foot-trailer equivalent units, the standard measurement for containerized cargo. The previous MSC class carried up to 6,402 TEUs.
"We have been saying for years that cargo ships are getting larger and more efficient," Port Everglades Director Phil Allen said in a statement. "Our 20-Year Master/Vision Plan recognizes that Port Everglades will need to widen and deepen its channels to handle fully loaded ships of this class and even larger ships once the Panama Canal expansion is completed in 2014."
MSC and its terminal operator Port Everglades Terminals LLC moved more than 106,609 TEUs of containerized freight in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, ranking as the port’s second largest terminal operation, the statement said.