Jiangnan Shipyard delivers the world's largest 24,000 TEU container ship to Evergreen Marine

        On July 11, the "EVER APEX," the world's largest 24,000 TEU container ship built by Jiangnan Shipyard, a subsidiary of China Shipbuilding Group, in cooperation with CSSC Trading for Evergreen Marine, was officially delivered.

The "EVER APEX" is the second of six 24,000 TEU container ships ordered by Evergreen Group from China Shipbuilding Group. The first ship in the series, the "EVER GIFT," built by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of China Shipbuilding Group, completed its flag-hanging delivery ceremony on June 23 and has since embarked on its maiden voyage. As the container ship with the largest capacity in the world, this series of ships is independently designed and developed in China, with complete independent intellectual property rights. It is currently the container ship with the largest cargo capacity globally.

This series of ships was independently designed by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (China Shipbuilding), classed by Lloyd's Register (LR). The ship has an overall length of 399.99 meters, a width of 61.5 meters, and a depth of 33.2 meters. It can carry 240,000 tons of cargo and load 24,000 standard containers at once. The maximum stacking height can reach 25 layers, making it arguably the ship with the strongest cargo carrying capacity in the world.

Breakthrough · Process Advancement · Process Optimization

Under the original construction method, the entire ship construction cycle was expected to take 24 months. Under the company's "high-quality delivery" initiative, the company required the construction team to break with convention and achieve the "844" cycle goal: 8 months for section production, 4 months for dry dock, and 4 months for wharf. To achieve this goal, the project team fully absorbed previous experience in container ship construction, starting from the initial design, advancing the process, and installing cabin accessories and other outfitting components during the section and general section stages. Through process optimization and the comprehensive promotion of two integrations during the construction process, the dual-dock linkage floating docking greatly improved the integrity of the out-of-dock state, laying a good foundation for shortening the wharf cycle. In addition, the project team strengthened opinion management before sailing. The operation department checked opinions with various production departments three times a week and closed the loop in time before sailing. At the same time, the opinions from the sister company Hudong-Zhonghua's sea trial were fully covered, ensuring that each item was checked, implemented, and closed.

1. Digital Trial Boxing

Trial boxing is an important part of the construction process of container ships. This ship carries 24,000 containers, and the pre-laid guide frames need to be simulated with containers first. In the past, physical boxes were used for trial boxing tests, and a single compartment often took 700 minutes. This ship used digital trial boxing, using data simulation to digitize the physical content data. The comprehensive promotion of digital simulation trial boxing greatly reduced the use of cranes and avoided the need for ship turning and the potential for repainting caused by bumps during lifting in physical trial boxing. It only takes a little over an hour to complete the trial boxing of one compartment.

2. Precise Oil Injection

Main engine oil injection is a key step in the wharf stage. Once the oil injection cycle is completed, it means that the main engine can be started. To this end, designers cooperated with the project team to add oil injection filter belts and flow detection devices to ensure the requirements of the flushing flow rate of each branch pipe, compressing the original cycle of about 40 days to 25 days, greatly shortening the wharf cycle.

Exploration · Exquisite Interior Decoration · Efficient Painting

With the further decomposition and deduction of the "844" goal, the project team further achieved a series of process advancements, such as doing dry dock work in the wharf stage and platform work in the dry dock stage. That is, the work originally done in the wharf stage and dry dock stage was completed in the previous stage. The integrated binding of the ship's container covers and the integrated propulsion shaft and rudder system were proposed, which respectively treat the originally separate entities in the construction process: the hull, trial boxing, hatch covers, and binding bridges, and the hull, main engine, propeller, shafting, and rudder system as "assembled building blocks."

The implementation of these two plans has had a profound impact on interior decoration and painting.

1. Exquisite Interior Decoration

Previously, the ship's superstructure could only be hoisted 2-3 weeks before undocking. This time, benefiting from the advancement of the integrated propulsion shaft and rudder system, it can now be hoisted 15 days after the half-ship floats, realizing the advancement of the entire hoisting. This allows the superstructure to be installed on the hull structure during the dry dock stage, and outfitting and painting work is carried out in advance, ensuring that the superstructure, deck, and engine room can achieve the interconnection of the pipe network, power grid, and information network during the dry dock stage. Interior decoration can "start work early" without waiting for the wharf stage, and the superstructure's wheelhouse can also be linked with the engine room integrated control room in advance, allowing the ship to "light up the entire ship" before undocking.

The superstructure not only houses the ship's command center and wheelhouse but also serves as the living, dining, and recreational area for the crew. To provide the crew with a comfortable "home away from home" feeling, the interior decoration personnel went to great lengths to improve the quality of the interior decoration during the construction process. They made a revolutionary attempt to achieve the goal set by the construction team of delivering the superstructure upon sailing. Before sailing, the interior decoration staff removed all protective films from the cabins. Initially, not only the construction personnel but also the ship owner did not understand why this work needed to be done in advance. However, when the ship owner and crew set sail and experienced the "move-in ready" feeling and saw the exquisitely decorated cabins, they deeply understood what exquisite interior decoration meant. "After the 7-day sea trial, we cleaned the living garbage and floor in the cabins, and the interior decoration still looked like it had just been renovated." An interior decoration department staff member introduced that this improvement allowed the interior cabins to reach the delivery state upon sailing.

2. Efficient Painting

The open-air area of the cargo hold of a large container ship accounts for nearly 70% of the entire ship, and painting operations are affected by the weather, with great uncertainty in project progress. As the last step in each area, the condition of the painting is very important.

The implementation of the integrated ship container cover binding has a great impact on the integrity of the handover painting, the rhythm of the painting, the improvement of painting efficiency, and the decomposition of labor. It allows painting to be broken down and interspersed, eliminating the need to pile it all up to the "critical moment." For example, the area of the engine room that needs rust removal is nearly 40,000 m2, equivalent to 5.6 standard football fields, and the advancement of the integrated propulsion shaft and rudder system allows the engine room painting to be carried out in stages and zones, avoiding labor concentration and adding time for mooring tests.

In order to better reduce costs and increase efficiency and reduce safety risks, the large container ship project team proposed the concept of "perfect bulkhead."

For the painting of container ships, the main workload is in the cargo hold, and the main workload in the cargo hold is in the bulkhead, and the key to bulkhead work is the watertight bulkhead. To help achieve "perfect bulkhead," the project team adjusted the attitude of the watertight bulkhead assembly, changing the assembly mode from "bowl-up" to "inverted." This way, in rainy weather, the accumulation of water and coating pollution during the assembly stage can be avoided, greatly improving painting efficiency.

Harvest • Achieving New Milestones

As the first of a series of vessels built by the company, the H2630 has already achieved two major milestones.

On November 15, 2021, the vessel successfully achieved the first domestic floating alignment of a giant section, integrating the floating of the giant section with the docking of the section, achieving a docking accuracy of 5mm;

A month and a half later, on December 30, 2021, the vessel achieved full ship power and networking, successfully lighting up the entire ship!

But the project team's efforts never stopped. During the mooring test, the equipment data was analyzed in advance to achieve system joint debugging; the data from the preliminary test was predicted and analyzed to solve subsequent navigation problems; it truly achieved "judging installation by installation, judging static by dynamic, and judging test by test". After 7 days of sea trials, the number of shipowner's comments was significantly reduced compared to previous container ships, and all were corrected before delivery.

"Breaking inertia, we have gained many improvements in construction concepts, innovations in methods, and technological advancements during the construction of this vessel. We will strive to solidify the rhythm on subsequent vessels and seek greater breakthroughs." said Wang Li, the chief constructor of the vessel.