The Port of Valencia has registered a new historical milestone in the movement of containers in a single port stop by managing a total of 9,718 TEUs (a unit of measurement equivalent to a 6.1 metre or 20 foot container) carried out by the MSC GULSUN ship between 8 and 10 December in the installations of MSC Terminal Valencia. This is more than a thousand containers more than the previous mark registered at the end of August by the MSC SIXIN, when 8,701 were mobilised.
The operation highlights the capacity of the Port of Valencia to manage the operations of this type of mega-container ship, which is becoming more and more frequent among the main shipping companies in the world, which are betting on replacing their fleet and increasing the size of their ships. The MSC GULSUN range is one of MSC’s mega-vessels, with a capacity of around 24,000 TEUs and a length of 400 metres.
Specifically, 5,149 containers have been loaded and 4,569 unloaded on this scale carried out by MSC GULSUN in the Port of Valencia, exceeding 9,000 units for the first time in a single call, figures which reflect the reactivation of the Spanish and Valenciaport commercial activity after overcoming the most delicate moments caused by the Covid-19.
Thus, since August, goods traffic in Valenciaport has been recovering, after the fall suffered at the beginning of the pandemic, to reach similar figures by the end of 2019. In this sense, it should be noted that in August and October Valenciaport recorded two milestones by exceeding 500,000 containers and in the last three months (August-September-October) nearly one and a half million containers have been managed.
Larger and more efficient ships
The MSC GULSUN, is the first ship built from a series of large container ships of the MSC shipping company. The GULSUN is 400 metres long and 62 metres wide, enabling it to carry up to 23,756 TEU and 2,000 refrigerated containers. Like the ships in this series, it is designed with the latest technology and following strict environmental criteria that allow a significant reduction in CO2 for each container transported compared to the average of container ships operating today, helping companies that move goods on MSC’s services between Asia and Europe to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains.
This ship carries out the Jade service that connects China with Valencia where the Port of Valencia has become a strategic destination as a mixed port that combines export/import with transhipment. The characteristic of Valenciaport favours the economic and commercial activity of the Valencian Community and Spain, as MSC uses the Valencian enclave as a hub for its connections between North Africa and the Far East.
Maritime traffic, a fundamental way of connecting the world’s commercial traffic flows (90% in volume and 73% in value), has already proven to be the most efficient in terms of cost and sustainability. In recent years, shipping companies are betting on technological advances and economies of scale associated with the size of the ship, concentrating goods and betting on reference ports where these ships can operate such as the Port of Valencia, which has to continue with its projects to respond to this demand from the environmental, technological and human resources point of view.