Wide-Alpha

NYK IS to take delivery of the first of 10 vessels of 5,370 TEU, the Wide Alpha, built by Hanjin's Subic Bay yard, Philippines assigned to the Asia-ECSA joint service from PIL, K Line, NYK and HMM. The vessel was chartered by NYK in January for a period of eight to 10 months along with sister ship the Wide Bravo for deployment on the same service to replace conventional over-panamax ships of 4,538 TEU. The Wide Alpha is owned by US private equity firm Oaktree Capital and managed by Germany freight line Rickmers Reederei and Schulte Group since contract in May 2013. These ships are fitted with 650 reefer plugs (up to 20 per cent of the ship'seffective TEU capacity), making them interesting candidates for reefer-heavy trades, especially those related to ANZ and to some Latin America trades. They can move at 21.5 knots, propelled by a fully electronically-controlled slow speed engine of 28,260 kW designed by MAN-B&W (model G80ME-C9 in six-cylinder version), allowing the ships to optimise fuel oil consumption while slow steaming. This new model burns four to five per cent less fuel than the best common engines currently in service, thanks to this unusual stroke-to-bore ratio, the ultra-long stroke design.