London Container Terminal welcomes MSC's neo panamax vessel into Tilbury
London Container Terminal in Tilbury, along with the Port of London Authority (PLA), welcomed the inaugural call of MSC’s neo-panama vessel to the Thames this week following her transit of the newly enlarged Panama Canal, the company said in its press release.
The MSC operated vessel, Sofia Celeste, has a capacity of over 8,800 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) and is the first in a new class of vessels deployed on a reconfigured service connecting the West Coast of South America, East Coast of North America and Northwest Europe. The vessel is the first to call into the UK after having transited the new Panama Canal.
LCT is the UK’s largest reefer container terminal and one of the most efficient UK ports for handling containers. This new service from MSC into LCT comes as a direct result of the opening of the Panama Canal Expansion in June this year (2016) which now allows larger vessels to transit the famous waterway.
The MSC Sofia Celeste was completed in 2014 and has an on-board capacity of 8,819 TEU’s, of which 1,462 can be used with refrigerated container plugs for transporting perishable cargo. The ship is the first to trade on MSC’s newly redesigned South America West Coast-USA-Northwest Continent service line, which makes stops in Chile, Peru, Ecuador and the Bahamas, Philadelphia and then Rotterdam.
About The Port of Tilbury - the major Port to London and the South East
The Port of Tilbury is London's major port, providing fast, modern distribution services for the benefit of the south east of England and beyond. A dynamic and diverse port handling the full range of cargoes with specialist expertise in the handling of paper and forest products, containers & Ro Ro, grain and bulk commodities and construction and building materials.
Tilbury's strategic location makes it the natural point for distribution with 18 million people living within 75 miles. Serving the UK's market, the port offers customers excellent transport links to and from the capital and across the South East where over 50% of the population live and work.