An AP Moller-Maersk boxship is heading back to Asia after collecting nearly 8,000 empty containers from ports in Australia.
The 9,640-teu Soroe Maersk (built 1999) was deployed as an “empty sweeper” calling at Sydney and Melbourne.
The vessel travelled to Australia from Thailand, making its first call at Port Botany, Sydney, where it picked up an estimated 3,756 teu, or roughly 40% of its capacity, according to port operator NSW Ports.
The Soroe Maersk departed Port Botany late on 29 March bound for the Port of Melbourne, where it loaded a further 4,148 teu before heading for Vietnam, China and Hong Kong on Tuesday.
“The empty sweeper is a welcome arrival, assisting in alleviating empty container build-up caused by ‘pandemic buying’, as Australian consumers spend money on imported goods, including home renovations and personal shopping, rather than travel and experiences,” said NSW Ports.
A Maersk spokeswomen told TradeWinds that the increase in demand for containerised imports to Oceania, coupled with port congestion, resulted in “increased pools of empty containers in the region”.
Container evacuation
“To ensure we continue to meet customer demand at export demand ports, we continue to evaluate the need for additional empty container evacuation,” she said.
“Soroe Maersk is one of the vessels evacuating Maersk empty containers from Australia to demand locations in Asia.”
Neil Chambers, director of the Container Transport Alliance Australia, welcomed Maersk’s decision.
“It will certainly help to alleviate an element of chronic empty container congestion, but we are still experiencing ‘stress’ in the empty container management chain in Australian ports,” he said.
“We need some of the other shipping lines to follow suit with additional empty evacuations back to Asian ports, where the empty container shortage is still acute, and made worse by the recent Suez Canal blockage.”
The arrival of the 347-metre Soroe Maersk marked a record for Port Botany and Port of Melbourne: it is the longest ever vessel to call at each port.
Port of Melbourne chief executive Brendan Bourke said that through the port’s development strategy and investment programmes, it “stood ready to accommodate the global trend of growing vessel sizes”.
Maersk Oceania managing director Henrik Jensen added: “The Soroe Maersk port call into Melbourne allows us to test potential future network and infrastructure aspects.”
