The Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore has welcomed the largest container ship ever to visit Maryland with the arrival of the Evergreen Ever Max at Seagirt Marine Terminal on August 19. The vessel weighed 165,350 tons and has the capacity to handle 15,432 Twenty-foot Equivalent (TEU) containers.
Maryland’s Port is capable of accommodating large container ships because of its infrastructure: the Port of Baltimore has a 50-foot-deep channel and an array of the ultra-large, NeoPanamax cranes needed to serve a vessel of this size.
“It’s no secret why these massive container ships want to call on the Port of Baltimore,” said Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld. “They know Maryland’s Port is a valuable resource and a terrific partner in moving goods efficiently across the state and throughout the region.”
At about 1,200 feet in length, the Ever Max is longer than four football fields. Previously, the largest container ship to visit the Port of Baltimore was another Evergreen vessel, the Triton, which first visited in 2019 and has a capacity of 14,424-TEU containers.
“Ships like the Evergreen Ever Max are able to come to the Port of Baltimore because of the work of every link in our supply chain,” said Maryland Port Administration – Port of Baltimore Interim Acting Executive Director Brian Miller. “From our great International Longshoremen’s Association to our incredible truckers, pilots, tugs, freight forwarders, terminal operators and private marine terminals, the Port of Baltimore succeeds because we all pull in the same direction.”
The most recent figures through May show major commodities at the state-owned, public marine terminals such as roll-on/roll-off farm and construction equipment, containers and general cargo are all up year to date compared to 2022. Roll-on/roll-off cargo is up 30%, containers are up 10% and general cargo is up 8%. The 2023 start follows an outstanding 2022, when the Port handled a record $74.3 billion in foreign cargo and established other new records for roll-on/roll-off, containers, general cargo and forest products despite worldwide supply chain issues.
The Port’s rising container business will be further buoyed by the ongoing CSX-owned Howard Street Tunnel expansion project in Baltimore, which will allow for double-stacked container rail cars, clearing a longtime hurdle for the Port and giving the East Coast seamless double-stack capacity from Maine to Florida. The project involves clearance improvements in the 127-year-old tunnel and at 21 other locations between Baltimore and Philadelphia. With the tunnel expansion project, Baltimore will be able to send double stacked containers by rail into the Ohio Valley and onto Chicago.
(Photo from Maryland Ports)
