The container ship CMA CGM Palais Royal, during a call at the Port of Beirut, Dec. 30, 2023. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin)
The CMA CGM Palais Royal, the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered container ship, with a capacity of 23,000 TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units), arrived at the port of Beirut on Saturday, becoming the largest container ship ever to unload at this port, the carrier said in a statement.
The vessel, now deployed on the MEX service, links North Asia to the Mediterranean. This crossing takes 40 days. It will be calling at the Lebanese capital until Jan. 1, to unload containers of staple foodstuffs, furniture, electronic equipment and solar panels.
Longer than four football pitches (400 meters) and as tall as a 26-story building (78 meters), the CMA CGM Palais Royal is the world's largest LNG-powered container ship.
"With the ambition of becoming Net Zero Carbon by 2050, the CMA CGM Group has invested more than $15 billion to renew its fleet and is mobilizing, through PULSE, its Energies fund, $1.5 billion to invest in the development of alternative energies for transport and logistics ... In 2023, CMA CGM reduced its carbon emissions by almost one million tons compared with the previous year," explained the carrier in its press release.
"The CMA CGM Group is once again demonstrating its attachment to Lebanon and honoring these commitments to develop, modernize and automate the country's two container terminals," said CMA CGM's Managing Director in the Levant, Joseph Dakkak, on Saturday.
"This comes at a time when the major logistics corridors of world trade are taking shape, linking Asia to Europe, via the Middle East. In this way, the CMA CGM Group is positioning Lebanon at the center of world trade in goods," he added.
Compagnie Maritime d'Affrètement and Compagnie Générale Maritime (CMA CGM) is a French container shipowner with world headquarters in Marseille. Its chairman and CEO is Rodolphe Saadé, a 53-year-old Franco-Lebanese with extensive international experience.