LR classed Alexandros and Aristotelis are the first of five new 5,000 teu super-efficient new ships, all to be delivered from HHI Gunsan by June 2013, that sees Capital expand its operations into the container sector

Capital Shipmanagement has marked the delivery of their new container ships, Alexandros (on charter as Hyundai Prestige) and Aristotelis (on charter as Hyundai Premium) delivered at HHI Gunsan, respectively, last month and on Monday this week. It is understood that the order represents the first such series of post-boom super-efficient container ships of this size.

Speaking in Piraeus on Friday at a Capital reception to mark the event, Evangelos Marinakis, CEO of Capital commented: “These are demanding times for all of us. We are doing our upmost to serve as best as possible the needs of our clients for the years to come. With fuel prices high and with our increasing environmental responsibilities we are investing in high performance, truly eco, environmentally-friendly new tonnage.”

Mr Marinakis added: “When contracting for this new series of 5000 teu container ships, we paid special attention to obtaining a design with engines which offer high efficiency throughout the entire load range in order to achieve speed flexibility with the best fuel consumption and a reduced carbon footprint. It’s great to see this new design in the water and safely delivered to our charterers Hyundai Merchant Marine.”

Apostolos Poulovassilis, Lloyd’s Register’s Regional Marine Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: “Congratulations to Capital and all involved. We have been very proud to be working with HHI and Capital on this new series of LR classed container ships – our technical experts have been providing support every step of the way. This included our specially established design optimisation/verification service which examined many aspects of this high-specification design and how these features interact together holistically in order to meet the required standards of safety, environmental performance and energy efficiency across the whole operational envelope of the ships.”

The ships are equipped with AMP (Alternative Marine Power System), often known as a ‘cold ironing’ system facility, where shore can provide electrical supply while in port with maximum power of 3.2 MW. This is a system where a container vessel can, whilst in port, shut down its generators and ‘plug’ into the shore power. This reduces emissions from the exhausts whilst in port. It is not yet a widely used system but is particularly suitable for container vessels, which traditionally have a high consumption in port in order to run their generators for the reefer containers. In addition to this, each ship’s main engine has advanced automatic surveillance, performance, evaluation and diagnostic systems.

The ships are also fitted with an ‘X’ – twisted full spade rudder. The benefits of using such a rudder is that a twist in the upper and lower part of the rudder blade prevents cavitation and associated erosion problems developing as a consequence of rotational flow aft of the propeller. As well as this, the vessels are designed for one man bridge control and capable of sailing at slow and super slow speeds.