SHANSI AND HUPEH Fully Unitised Sideport Loading Vessels

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32053, 30 July 1969, Page 11

SHANSI AND HUPEH Fully Unitised Sideport Loading Vessels

Last week Shansi, the first fully-unitised vessel on the New Zealand Unit Express service, arrived in New Zealand to inaugurate a radically different sea transport service. , i.

The vessels Shansi and Hupeh, owned by the British-registered, Hong Kong-based shipping company, China Navigation Company, Ltd, form the New Zealand Unit Express or N.Z.U.E. —initials which will become familiar to New Zealand importers and exporters

—a modern and efficient link between New Zealand and the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The service is the brainchild of two large and well-established ship owners—the China Navigation Company and the large Japanese shipping company, Mitsui-O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. This sendee is partly the result of a degree of rationalisation of the services operated by the two companies, but it is more than that. The two ships will provide New Zealand’s first fully unitised service with specially designed and converted sideport loading vessels; all cargo carried is intended to be solely on pallets, or in wiretainers, miniflats, seatrainers, or preslung, and it will be handled both on the wharf and within the ship by forklift trucks. The ships themselves, in order to facilitate maximum use of forklift trucks, have undergone expensive and extensive alterations, including installation of hydraulically operated sideports, cargo platforms, fully flushed cargo decks and tween deck hatch covers, and “squaring off” of cargo compartments within the ship.

After many hundreds of years of handling individual items of cargo by the bag, box crate or carton, thus constantly increasing costs, the requirements of modern trade are producing many forms of sophisticated cargo handling, including cellular container ships, roil-on rolloff vessels, Scandia type ships and others. Both China Navigation Co. and Mitsui-O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. concede that all these methods have their place in particular trades. Their own specific trade lends itself ideally to a basic two-ton unit on a pallet, loaded by forklift trucks, both between shed and the ship and within the ship. While it is true that even this degree of sophistication involves the shipping companies in heavy capital expenditure, including the pallets themselves and the forklift trucks carried on board the vessels, at the same time the N.Z.U.E. requires very little alteration in methods already very much a part of most shippers’ operations. It is believed that the New Zealand trade to SouthEast Asia will be well served by this swift and efficient unitised service which starts and ends with mechanical handling based

on the two-ton unit of cargo. This is a unit size to which most shippers can easily gear their production; it entails the minimum of capital outlay by them. To palletise his cargo the shipper requires only the pallets and a handoperated portable hoist, a modest strapping machine and a level factory or warehouse floor. China Navigation Co. and Mitsui-OS.K. Lines, Ltd, arranged to substitute for their individual services this new and improved monthly unit service. Shansi and Hupeh are scheduled to leave New Zealand on approximately the Bth of each month after discharging and loading at Wellington, Lyttelton, Mount Mau-

nganui and Auckland for Manila, Kaohsiung, Keelung and Hong Kong. This gives an improved transit time from New Zealand to Taiwan of 15 days. The ships will leave Hong Kong on the 3rd of each month for Lautoka and Suva, thence New Zealand, arriving at Auckland on the 20th, for Wellington, Lyttelton, Mount Maunganul and second call Auckland. This builds upon China Navigation Co.’s earlier service which provided the first regular New ZealandTaiwan sea link. The system which the N.Z.U.E. intends to employ, starting with the Shansi this month, predicates that all cargo will be loaded in a unitised form.

Mimruri. Sml »la<<«ma with callaaaltla •ndi for unitlolnr that corf# which la not ouitibto to Kflotiution, for ratoons of Irrigu. Itr ohspos and to crushing.