Durban Car Terminal Completes Handling the World’s Largest RORO Vessel
The Durban Car Terminal this morning completed working on the world’s largest roll-on roll off (RORO) vessel MV Salome in her maiden voyage to Africa, carrying a consignment of 644 fully built units comprised of both imports and exports.
Built for heavy abnormal cargo with a weight of 75 000 tons when fully laden, the RORO vessel arrived in Durban after sailing from Europe 18 days ago. According to Niran Sheoprosad, General Manager at Wallenius Wilhemsen Ocean (WW Ocean), “This is the first time a vessel of this size is coming to South Africa as it usually operates between Europe, the United States and Australia – it’s something we should be proud of as we have a world title holder on our shores. MV Salome is one of four sister vessels which are our Mark V series. She is big, flexible and purpose built to carry super heavy loads with a stern ramp capacity of 505 tons and main deck height of 7.1m. With a length of 265m, seeing our Mark V vessel against standard car carrier, makes you truly appreciate her size. Additionally, these Mark V vessels are uniquely designed to have more roro decks than car decks and the ability to drive up to the weather deck to load cargo. Even with heavy loads, she still manages to keep a light draught to call most ports.”
The Durban Car Terminal last month celebrated a milestone, recording over 600 000 fully built units handled in a single financial year despite having capacity for 520 000 units. The arrival of MV Salome cements the trend of increasing automotive volumes coming in and out of South Africa following the opening of the hospitality industry post COVID19 and increased domestic consumption. The terminal acknowledges the introduction of this massive carrier to service South Africa and Africa in general, with the hope that she will unlock the much-needed capacity in the automotive sector and support its future expansion.
Integrated planning between WW Ocean, Transnet and other logistical stakeholders contributed to the great performance of this call where, yard preparation for import operations were done in advance and export pre-assembling was above board. All preparations were done 24 hours prior to the vessel’s arrival and now she sets sail for Australia after a planned eight hours of loading and offloading units.
