Commissioning of "Singapore Express" Hapag-Lloyd expanding its fleet

Hapag-Lloyd plans to continue to achieve strong growth in container tr
ansport.
On August 28th 2000 the "Singapore Express" will be integrated into th
e fleet as the fifth of seven 4,900 TEU newbuildings introduced this y
ear.
"World container transport will continue to grow by six to eight perce
nt annually, and we are orienting our capacity planning accordingly. W
e will be commissioning a total of seven containerships this year," st
ated Gunther Casjens, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd Container Line, on the occasi
on of the delivery of the "Singapore Express".
The newbuilding will enter service on a long-term charter basis in Bus
an (Korea) on August 28th 2000. She is 294m long, 32m wide, has a capa
city of 67,000t and can carry 4,890 TEU. The vessel has a maximum spee
d of 24 knots and, like her sister ships, was built at Hyundai Heavy I
ndustries, Ulsan (Korea). Another newbuilding in this series, the "Rot
terdam Express", will be named in Rotterdam on September 18th 2000.
The "Singapore Express" will be deployed in the weekly Pacific-Atlanti
c express
service ("PAX") of the Grand Alliance. This service links Europe with
the North
American East and West Coast as well as Asia and is operated with a to
tal of 13
ships.
In its worldwide liner services Hapag-Lloyd offers weekly seven sailin
gs between Europe and Asia as well as nine on the Pacific between Asia
and North America, not to mention eleven weekly services on the North
Atlantic. It also offers links with Latin America (twice weekly), Aus
tralia/New Zealand and the Indian subcontinent (four a week in each ca
se). These extensive liner services are supplemented by a comprehensiv
e feeder network with many thousand of links annually.