MARSEILLES' CMA CGM Group has taken delivery of the 13,830-TEU CMA CGM Corte Real built by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in South Korea, the third in a series of eight vessels of similar size.

CMA CGM's Corte Real is 365 metres long, 51 metre wide and has a 15.5 metre draught, making her the largest vessel sailing under the UK flag.

The vessel has joined the CMA CGM Christophe Colomb and the CMA CGM Amerigo Vespucci on the FAL5 service (French Asia Line) linking Asia to North Europe that was launched in early July.

These large capacity vessels are expected to enable the CMA CGM Group to meet growing volumes on Asia-Europe routes, which have been showing a strong recovery in recent months, registering 20 per cent growth westbound between Asia and North Europe in the first half of the year and nine per cent growth eastbound compared to the same period last year.

"With this new 13,800-TEU vessel, CMA CGM Group continues to develop a state of the art fleet allying modernity and competitiveness and allowing us to meet our customers' demand on the Asia-Europe market," said Nicolas Sartini, senior vice president Asia/Europe Lines, CMA CGM Group.

The CMA CGM Corte Real started its port rotation on August 17 in Ningbo before calling at ports in: Shanghai, QINGDAO-Yantian, Tanjung Pelepas, Port Klang, Le Havre, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Port Klang and Singapore.
(Source:www.schednet.com)