French LNG-powered container ship company CMA CGM to add LNG location Ennore port to India service
CMA CGM, the French container shipping line based in the Mediterranean port of Marseille and the third-largest in the world and with a growing fleet of LNG-powered vessels, has a new service to the LNG fuel location of Ennore port on the East Coast of India.
The containerships will expand port coverage with a direct call to Ennore, near Chennai in India, on the Westbound leg of the service connecting North Europe and the Mediterranean with Oceania as from June 2023.
“This new call will offer our customers a fast export connection from the main commercial area in South East India to Europe together with a direct import connection from Australia and Singapore,” said CMA CGM.
“Ennore is also a natural gateway from/to the Inland Container Depot of Bangalore covered with efficient rail connectivity,” added the French company.
The other LNG fuel ports in CMA CGM’s so-called NEMO service include Fos Sur Mer near Marseille, La Spezia in Italy, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Malta and Singapore.
French LNG storage tanks designer GTT is supplying the tanks for six more LNG-powered containerships ordered from South Korea by CMA CGM.
The six containerships are being constructed at the Korean shipyard of Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries.
The vessels, each capable of carrying 8,000 containers, will be equipped with an LNG fuel tank with a capacity of 6,000 cubic metres.
The deliveries of the vessels are scheduled from the fourth quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter of 2025.
CMA CGM is a pioneer of LNG-powered containerships and has about 12 more of the vessels being built in China.
The shipping line has said it is aiming to have a fleet of 44 LNG-fuelled containerships by 2024.
The 12 China-built vessels will be delivered between the last quarter of 2023 and the third quarter of 2024.
The construction contracts for those CMA CGM newbuilds were awarded to Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding and Jiangnan Shipyard Co.
Each of the Chinese yards is building six vessels able to carry between 13,000 and 15,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containers.
The first ever LNG-powered containership was delivered to CMA CGM from the Hudong-Zhonghua yard and entered commercial operation in September 2020.
The 23,000 TEU “CMA CGM Jacques Saadé” was named after the late Lebanon-born founder of the shipping line and father of current Chairman Rodolphe Saadé.
