SCA Charters Two Large Container Vessels

May 4, 2020 (Press Release) - On April 22, 2020, SCA takes two bigger container vessels on charter. The vessels have considerably larger cargo capacity than their predecessors. They are today named m/v Baltic Shearwater and m/v Baltic Petrel.

“We at SCA Logistics have a strategy to develop large-scale solutions that make us even more cost-effective in the long term. With the new vessels, the goal is to load 40 percent more container cargo. By large-scale, the vessels also contribute to a lower climate impact while at the same time strengthening our customers' competitiveness,” says Nils Johan Haraldsson, Vice President Marketing and Business Development at SCA Logistics.

To enlarge the container traffic is also part of the ongoing efforts of expansion and development of the ports in Sundsvall and Umeå.

“In both cities, the port developments will bring increased opportunities for container traffic. The trend with bigger container volumes is also evident, not least in our own ports where container volumes are steadily increasing and have been doing so for many years,” continues Nils Johan.

Southbound, the cargo is dominated by export products from the forest industry, to a large extent our own goods from SCA, but also from other pulp, paper and sawmill industries. There is also cargo from other basic industry and mechanical companies. Northwards the freights are containers with mostly consumer goods and intermediate products, which are shipped to the industries.

“It is important that we can build larger and more stable volumes from Umeå and Sundsvall, that strengthens also the competitiveness of our customers in a global market," says Nils Johan.

Initially, the new vessels will run according to the current route Umeå-Sundsvall-Oxelösund-Rotterdam. After an initial period, the plan is to transport the vessels into a shipyard for repainting. It may then also be relevant to rename them so that the vessels receive SCA names.

About SCA's new vessels and fleet

After four successful years, the new container vessels replace m/v SCA Tunadal and m/v SCA Munksund, which have also been chartered. The theoretical capacity of the new vessels is 1638 TEU nom¹. It can be compared with the two previous vessels which had a capacity of 1018 TEU nom. With heavy products from the forest industry, however, the number of containers falls to some extent. The larger vessels are more fuel efficient and reduce carbon dioxide emissions per shipped container. In addition to the new container vessels, SCA's fleet consists of our own three RoRo vessels m/s SCA Obbola, m/s SCA Ortviken and m/s SCA Östrand.

¹ TEU = A load gauge for a container vessel that refers to the space of a 20-foot container.

SOURCE: SCA