First Lyttelton visit for big ship

Press, 19 June 1979, Page 14

First Lyttelton visit for big ship

One of the biggest refrigerated container ships in the World will make her first visit to Lyttelton on July 10. The visit by the 43,995ton Resolution Bay is seen as a breakthrough for the Lyttelton Harbour Board in its attempts to get greater use of its container terminal. The Overseas Container Lines vessel previously called only at Port Chalmers in the South Island.

Another big container ship and sister to the Resolution Bay, the Mairangi Bay, was also to have called at Lyttelton.

But the operations manager of P. and O. in Christchurch (Mr D. F. Anson) said that the Mairangi Bay would not visit Lyttelton because of Overseas dockyard problems.

O.C.L. has seven cont a i n e r vessels in A.N.Z.E.C.S. (AustraliaNew Zealand-Europe Container Service), of which the Shipping Corporation is also a member. The New Zealand Pacific is of similar design to the Bay ships. The Bay ships were built at the Bremer Vulkan shipyard, West Germany. Each took 11 months from keel-laying to launching.

The Resolution Bay entered service in 1977. She can carry 1950 containers, is 248.6 m long, and requires a 12m maximum summer draught. She has a service speed of 21 knots. The Resolution Bay was built for use with container .terminals which have a fast turn-round time. Shipping industry sources say that, the visit of the Resolution Bay to Lyttelton may be an indication of revised schedules after the recent release of O.C.L.’s annual report. The company reported a 25 per cent drop in pre-

tax profits, with the New Zea 1 a n d-Britain trade named as one df the better aspects. The drop in profits occurred in spite of an 18 per cent increase in container trade, which reached a total of 301,482 containers for the year to November, 1978. The O.C.L. report said, “The New Zealand trade had held up well and the country had been relatively free of industrial trouble. Profits seem likely to fall again in the current year but the indications are that the New Zealand trade will maintain last year’s level.”