The ship has a capacity of 10,000 TEU’s, is 1,145 feet long
and 150 feet wide, making it more than twice the diameter of the Tacoma Dome and
almost twice the height of the Space Needle. It can hold about 40 percent more
cargo than most of the container ships calling at the Port of Tacoma.
“Ships continue to get larger, and we are ready for them,”
Port of Tacoma Chief Executive Officer John Wolfe said.
ZIM Integrated Shipping, based in Israel, began calling at
the Port of Tacoma last July, when the Grand Alliance, a consortium of three of
the world’s largest shipping lines, including German-based Hapag-Lloyd, Orient
Overseas Container Line of Hong Kong and the Japanese NYK Line, relocated from
the Port of Seattle to Tacoma’s Washington United Terminals.
Washington United is a 110-acre container terminal on the
Blair Waterway. The terminal is home to four post-Panamax and two
super-post-Panamax cranes capable of handling the largest ships in the world,
51-foot water depth, on-dock rail and a berth measuring 2,600 feet.
“We are fortunate to
have naturally deep water,” Wolfe said, “and we are investing in our terminals
and road and rail infrastructure to handle more cargo and the associated
super-post-Panamax ships and cranes.”
The ZIM Djibouti is in the PNX
trans-Pacific service. Before arriving in Tacoma, it called in Vancouver,
British Columbia, and was scheduled to head to Pusan, South Korea on July 11.
