The dimensions of some ships continue to leave us speechless. When it comes to cruises, there is an undoubted battle for size and extravagance with a Royal Caribbean that is in an interesting race of self-improvement. They have the colossal Icon of the Seas, but they are already working on another even bigger one. However, in the ocean there are many other huge ships and, apart from container ships, we have Ro-Ro: real marine fortresses with a very specific mission: transport thousands of cars from factories to dealerships.
One of those Ro-Ro is the Anji Sincerity, a mass that belongs to SAIC and that intends to flood Europe with Chinese cars. Despite its size, the interesting thing is that it is more “ecological”, and the secret is in its engines that run on liquefied natural gas.
Control from start to finish. SAIC, or SAIC Motor Corporation Limited, is one of the most important companies currently in the automotive industry. It is a company based in Shanghai and is behind, curiously, one of the best-selling cars in Spain last year: the MG ZS. MG is just one of SAIC’s brands, but the company is also one of Volkswagen’s main partners in the Asian country.
And, in addition to cars, they now have a huge Ro-Ro boat called Anji Sincerity in their fleet. These boats are called as a diminutive of ‘roll-on/roll-off’ and, basically, they are boats that are used to transport vehicles. Yes, like container ships, but instead of carrying the cars enclosed in a container, they are in this kind of floating parking lot. Zhao Aimin is the Deputy General Manager of SAIC International and comment that, due to global competition in this segment, having their own fleet of boats of this style gives them flexibility and better price control, since until now they were renting boats from third parties.
A colossal parking lot. This huge ship has been manufactured by China State Shipbuilding Corp., being the first ship of this class manufactured entirely with national investment and has a system that collects information from every corner of the ship to make its control easier. And all the facilities in this sense are few when it is about of a ship 199.9 meters long, 38 meters wide and 15.5 meters deep. She has a whopping 7,600 parking spaces and on her maiden voyage to Europe she transported more than 5,000 vehicles including cars, buses and machinery.
The green Ro-Ro. And one feature that makes it very special is that it is the largest ecological Ro-Ro vehicle transporter in the world at the moment. It is powered by LNG and esteem which has emissions 30% lower than those of a boat of the same category, but with traditional fuel. The tank has a capacity of 4,000 cubic meters and, to give us an idea of what that can translate into, it means that it can cover a round trip from China to South America and from China to Europe.
The objective when building this Ro-Ro is to comply with the environmental protection criteria and emissions requirements of regions such as North America, New Zealand, Australia and Europe, which may be somewhat stricter than those of other territories. In addition to LNG, the Chinese company is exploring other energy options, such as methanol.
Flood of Chinese cars. The Anji Sincerity is not the first from SAIC. One of the keys to its success outside China is, precisely, the ability to transport its cars and it currently has several ships that cover routes in Southeast Asia, Mexico, western South America and Europe. The objective is to have more transportation of this type and the plans are extremely ambitious: another 14 ships with transoceanic capacity for the next three years with capacities of 7,000, 7,600, 7,800 and 9,000 parking spaces.
SAIC achieved sales of more than 1.2 billion vehicles abroad last year, 18.3% more than the previous year. And it is clear that taking a step back is not among the company’s plans.
Image | ShanghaiEye
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