CSSF

Container Ship Safety Forum

Launched in 2014, the Container Ship Safety Forum (CSSF) is a global business-to-business network that improves safety performance and management practices in the container shipping industry.

CSSF members collaborate to advance the continuous improvement of safety culture and performance in the container shipping industry through measurement, reporting and benchmarking, sharing best practices and engaging with key stakeholders to develop durable solutions.

Costamare Shipping has been among the founding members of CSSF.

For more information, please see: www.cssf.global

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Our Business

Our Business

The global economy needs safe, efficient and environmentally sound ships to transport manufactured goods and other commodities around the world. Here we focus on a few of the key fundamentals to understanding what Costamare and its managers do.

Our Business In Context

  • Global Trade

    Global Trade requires ships.

    Global trade has multiplied in the last 20 years with an overall rise in living standards and the emergence of fast-developing economies in Asia and elsewhere. One ship can do the job of hundreds of freight aircraft or miles of rail cars. Due to their size and efficiency, ships are used to transport an estimated 90% of international trade to destination.

    As populations grow and urbanization continues in many parts of the world, more ships will be needed to meet the increased demand.

  • Containerisation

    Container shipping is a core global service industry.

    Modern container shipping was invented more than 50 years ago in the US and has been a driver of global trade, making shipping of hundreds of types of products cost efficient.

    Since 1990 the container trade has grown exponentially. About half of the entire value of world seaborne trade is carried by containerships - equal to the combined value of cargoes transported by tankers, natural gas carriers, dry bulk and other types of vessel.

  • Environmental Impact

    Environmentally, the industry outperforms other transport modes.

    Shipping is the most carbon-efficient form of transport. While moving 90% of world trade, it is estimated to produce less than 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this, the importance of the shipping industry makes vital its continued efforts to become even greener.

    Container shipping specifically has made great strides in efficiency over the last few years. Modern containerships are 35% more fuel-efficient than in 1985 and because of economies of scale the biggest ships of today offer a 75% improvement in carbon efficiency compared with 30 years ago based on cargo volume and distance transported.

  • Service Record

    Our partners span the globe.

    COSTAMARE INC.'s long experience in containerships plays a significant role when deciding to invest in vessels. Equally important is COSTAMARE INC.'s longstanding reputation as an owner of containerships and provider of these to the major liner companies.

    Over the years COSTAMARE INC. has done business with more than 40 liner and logistics companies, including the best known liner companies and logistics services in Asia, Europe and the US. Customer loyalty derives from a history of good industry relations, as well as from the efficiency and good charter performance of the COSTAMARE fleet of containerships.

  • Sustainability

    COSTAMARE INC. is positioned for the long term.

    Using its existing assets and competitive advantages, COSTAMARE INC. aims to build further its fleet of containerships and keep pace with expected growth in demand for shipping capacity and services.

    COSTAMARE INC. is proud to be a participant in an industry contributing in an environmentally sound way to the improvement of living standards and consumer choice around the world. COSTAMARE INC.'s corporate vision is to take this further by managing its business in a long-term and sustainable manner - for all our stakeholders including shareholders, employees and customers.

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Container Facts

Container Facts

If you are not already familiar with container shipping, the following nuggets of information will help put the scale of our industry in perspective.

  • The number of fully cellular container ships operating today stands at about 5,461 ships with a combined capacity of about 24.6 million TEUs (as of August 2021).

  • Since 2000 the average vessel size of container ships has more than doubled. Today’s largest container ship can carry about 24,000 TEUs.

  • The carrying capacity of today’s largest container vessels is equivalent to no less than a 44 miles long freight train.

  • A large container ship engine has about 1,250 times more power than a family car and is similar in size to a typical six-story building.

  • Standard containers measure 20 ft or 40 ft in length, the first of these providing the industry's standard capacity measurement 'TEU' (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit).

  • The simple 'dry van' container is estimated to account for about 90% of all containers, but there are various types catering for particular kinds of cargo. 'High cube' containers offer greater height, while other designs include open top, refrigerated, tank, open rack, gondola and flatrack. Most container ships can carry containers of mixed heights and types.

  • The humble 20 ft (TEU) container weighs about 2 tonnes when empty.

  • A standard container can hold about 24,900 tin cans or about 48,000 bananas. A 40 ft container may hold more than 12,000 shoeboxes.

  • Between 2000 and 2017 containerised cargo trade grew three times and about one and a half times faster than world GDP.

  • The global port throughput in 2017 was around 780 million TEUs.

  • Well over 1 billion tonnes is carried internationally in containers. By volume this accounts for about a quarter of all seaborne dry cargo. However, container ships transport half of the total value of global goods moved by sea.

  • About half of seaborne trade in refrigerated products is now carried by container ships in ‘reefer’ containers.

  • The typical cost of transporting a 20 ft container from Asia to Europe carrying over 20 tonnes of cargo is about the same as the economy airfare for a single passenger on the same journey.

The above container industry facts and figures have been compiled solely for the purpose of providing indicative information about the wider shipping industry and Costamare cannot guarantee the accuracy of any or all of the information provided, and can assume no responsibility to keep the information current or up to date. See also our 'Terms of Use'.

The above information has been selected from a number of different industry and publicly available sources: AXS-Alphaliner; ‘The Box’, by Marc Levinson; Container Management; Containerisation International; the Container Shipping Information Service (at www.shipsandboxes.com); Costamare Shipping; Clarkson Research Services; Drewry Shipping Consultants; Lloyd’s List; Shipping Facts; the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); Wikipedia.

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Operating Standards

Operating Standards

Costamare and its managers have a track record of providing a service that is on time, safe and environmentally friendly. To achieve this, the performance of management systems, crew and shore based staff are as important as the standard of the Costamare fleet.

Quality

Costamare's managers have each implemented a Quality, Safety and Environmental Management system. This integrates ISO 9001: 2008 quality management and ISO 14001:2004 environmental management standards with the International Safety Management (ISM) Code for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention. Costamare Shipping was first awarded quality certification and ISM compliance in November 1998, more than three years before the ISM Code came into effect for containerships, their owners and managers.

Safety

The Costamare fleet and our managers have adopted operating procedures which meet strict internal and external safety criteria. Costamare's managers are devoted to looking after the Costamare fleet and the crew and officers working on board and to protecting the environment. Costamare places great importance on human resources and training. Prudent investment in containerships as well as insistence on thorough monitoring and maintenance of the Costamare fleet are also at the heart of the Costamare philosophy.

Environment

Shipping is subject to strict standards of environmental protection driven by awareness of climate change and other effects from emissions. For many years Costamare Inc., its founders and its managers have supported voluntary programs to protect the marine environment. In 2008 five of the Costamare fleet registered with an operational CO2-indexing programme, becoming the first ships worldwide to comply fully with interim IMO guidelines on CO2-indexing.

IMO 2020 global sulphur limit

Costamare welcomes the conclusions of IMO’s MEPC 73 which direct IMO to work further towards a smooth, safe and consistent implementation of the 2020 global sulphur cap in marine fuels.

Costamare follows the guidelines of the IMO, as the sole global regulator for shipping and believes that the IMO 2020 regulation will provide safeguards against the safety and operational issues already detected and will not burden the ships and their crews with unrealistic and disproportionate responsibility and liability.

It is vital to ensure a smooth implementation of properly considered and effective regulations for the benefit of the environment and the sustainability of the shipping industry. Costamare will promote this new area in the shipping industry by any means possible setting the safety at sea as a top priority.

Labour

Costamare insists on above-standard living and working conditions for seafarers employed on the Costamare fleet. As part of this commitment, our managers, on top of their other quality, safety and environmental management systems have adopted the requirements of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 (MLC 2006).

Training

http://www.costamaretraining.com/

Costamare Marine Training Services S.A. (“Costamare MTS”) is a company offering high quality maritime education and training services to ship officers, crews and shipping companies' employees. Costamare MTS is a company affiliated with Costamare.
Costamare MTS Training Centre is equipped by state of the art training facilities such as the TRANSAS Navi Trainer Professional NTPRO 5000 240 degrees Simulator.
Costamare MTS's team of instructors comprises industry top professionals carefully selected on the basis of thorough theoretical knowledge and sea gained professional competence.
With the above facilities, courses and dedicated staff Costamare MTS provides maritime education and training of the highest industry standards.

Read more: Operating Standards

History of Container Shipping

History of Container Shipping

Interested to learn more about the container transportation industry? Read our exclusive summary of this modern transport revolution here.

The inventor

The idea of shipping products in containers is a very old one. The ancient Greeks used sealed vases – or amphorae – to transport oil or wine. Later cultures used large trunks to ship valuables aboard their sailing vessels. But containerisation is a modern phenomenon just over 50 years old.

Today containers being trailed along roads or transported on long railroad trains are everyday sights around the world. Shipping a variety of goods in standard containers such as these was an American invention. Others may have had similar ideas, but it was an entrepreneur named Malcom McLean who first put it into practice about half a century ago.

McLean, boss of his own trucking business in North Carolina, was frustrated by the laborious methods of handling goods in the early part of the 20th century. He saw that if it was possible to overcome congestion on the highways and the inefficient loading and discharge procedures of conventional cargo ships there would be massive benefits. Specifically, he envisaged the savings in time, labour and costs if the cargo containment part of a trailer could simply be lifted on and off the chassis and transported directly by ship. The idea sounds simple: but in fact it required considerable alterations to the ship and truck bodies of the day.

On 26 April 1956 McLean’s prototype - the refitted Second World War tanker, the Ideal-X - sailed from Newark to Houston carrying 58 truck bodies with the wheels removed. This shipment of the first modern containers heralded a revolution in transportation that has changed the world. In the 1950s it could still take up to five days for gangs of stevedores to unload a standard conventional cargo vessel and another five days for loading. ‘Breakbulk’ cargo ships were spending as much time in port as they did at sea.

The Ideal-X proved that the use of containers could dramatically reduce turnaround times in port. Furthermore, it slashed costs – from nearly $6 per ton on a breakbulk cargo ship to less than 16 cents to load a ton onto the first container ship. Other benefits rapidly emerged, including a sharp reduction in theft from cargoes on the quayside, leading to big reductions in insurance rates paid by shippers.

The next steps

McLean saw that using tankers would not fully realise the potential of this new mode of transport. By 1957, he had already introduced the first of a series of vessels converted into specialised container ships that were able to carry boxes below decks as well as on deck. They were more efficient container carriers. Soon enough, his company was re-branded Sea-Land Service, a name that summed up the ‘multi-modal’ union of overland and seaborne transportation. Able to call on plentiful surplus shipping left over from the war, the company operated a fast-expanding service mainly along the US east coast.

McLean also understood that beyond the ships, the logic of containerisation was that every part of the system would have to be developed specially in order to derive maximum efficiencies from the use of the container. Most importantly, this included the need to develop specialised container ports. Differing from the traditional big city ports, these required new dockside cranes rather than large teams of labourers. Containers were to be stacked in the open rather than stored in warehouses. Container ports also needed direct access to motorways and railway lines.

Traditional city centre ports such as New York or London could not compete, lacking room to store thousands of containers and unable to accept the hundreds of trucks needed for on-transport of containers from the ship. As dedicated new ports sprang up on hinterland sites, containerisation acted as a catalyst in the steady de-industrialisation and cleaning up of many of the world’s leading cities.

In the mid-1960s McLean’s Sea-Land further underlined the value of the container in improving the logistics of the American military’s adventure in Vietnam. The company soon had six container vessels crossing the Pacific from the US west coast. Sea-Land’s regular peacetime services went international in 1966 when the vessel Fairland departed New Jersey for a first cross-Atlantic voyage to Rotterdam with 236 containers on board. The Fairland and the other ships in the ground-breaking Atlantic service had bridge cranes for loading and unloading the containers and it would be some time before quayside cranes were built specifically for the new trade.

At the same time containers had been embraced by other companies and other continents. As early as 1958 another American carrier inaugurated containerisation in the Pacific with a sailing from San Francisco with 20 containers on deck. At the beginning of the 1960s Matson introduced its first full container vessel while American President Lines and others commissioned new container/breakbulk vessels.

The decade of the 1960s saw leading European shipping companies such as Germany’s Hapag Lloyd, Britain’s P&O an Denmark’s Maersk Line adapt to the container and introduce their first pure container-carrying vessels, while Japanese carriers led Asia’s conversion to box shipping.

By the end of the decade, McLean had sold Sea-Land and its impressive fleet of more than 40 container vessels. He returned to shipping in the late 1970s after a period of involvement in various other businesses. This time he purchased United States Lines, an esteemed but under-performing company, promising to revive it by building a team of jumbo container ships for a round-the-world service that could intersect with smaller, regional ‘feeder’ services. When they arrived in 1984, the visionary service was successfully launched and a new industry pattern established. But a worldwide industry recession brought US Lines to its knees.

When Malcolm Mclean died in 2001, aged 88, he was eulogised as the undisputed ‘father of containerisation’. He was named ‘Man of the Century’ by the International Maritime Hall of Fame and runner-up to Aristotle Onassis as ‘Man of the Century’ by Lloyd’s List, the London based newspaper often dubbed ‘The Bible of Shipping’.

More players, bigger ships

As an emerging specialist in container vessels in the 1980s, it is perhaps not too surprising that Costamare could claim a connection with Malcom McLean’s ships. After the collapse of US Lines, we purchased the two steam turbine powered vessels, Chevalier Roze and Chevalier Paul, each with capacity for 2,500 standard containers. In 1987, these were easily the largest vessels in Costamare’s fleet up to that point.

The development of Costamare was representative of two very important trends that altered the face of container shipping in the 1980s and 1990s. Our company was among the first of a new breed of container ship companies that specialised in ownership or management of the vessels and aimed to serve the major multi-modal container carriers rather than compete with them. This sector, which provides ships of every size for long term charter to the liner services, has become vital to the overall growth of the system.

The specialist providers of ships on charter have enabled the major carriers to expand their service networks much faster than they otherwise could have done, given the high capital requirements of developing the container ship fleet. Meanwhile the lines have been able to concentrate more on freight logistics and customer service.

The other major trend has been the growth in size of the container vessel.

Only 15 years earlier, Sea-Land had taken delivery of its innovative SL-7s, the largest as well as fastest containerships in the world up to that point with their capability of loading more than 1,000 standard boxes. The trend of developing ever larger vessels was now well-established, although few predicted how far it could practicably be taken. For many years, the dimensions of the Panama Canal were accepted as a practical limit on the size of vessels being built but in the late 1980s, American President Lines (now APL) began to build its C-10 and C-11 class ships, introducing vessels wider than the locks of the canal. These could carry more than 4,000 teus and changing global trade patterns encouraged further upscaling.

In the 1990s, the size of so-called ‘post-panamax’ vessels was pushed further, reaching about 7,000 teus capacity, and in the 21st century design of the largest ships has continued thinking ever bigger. Due to the integration of container logistics, this has in turn pushed the limits of port facilities, too. It was not long before ships capable of carrying more than 10,000 teus were under construction. The current record is held by Maersk Line’s SX Class vessels, introduced in 2006, which have capacity for up to about 15,000 teus.

Many experts suggest that the design of container vessels is now approaching the limits of technical viability – although predictions that the scale of ships had reached a plateau have been common during the sector’s rapid ascent.

Today container ships can carry virtually any type of cargo, including breakbulk cargo, and a variety of boxes caters for different kinds of commodities and goods. But standardisation has been key to the great success through efficiency of containerisation. Initially different carriers had their own specifications, meaning that often they could not carry each others’ containers. But interchangeability – not only between different companies’ fleets but also unifying the specifications of ships, trains and road transport was to everyone’s advantage.

In the 1960s the US Maritime Administration and then the International Standards Organisation adopted a number of standard lengths, with 20 ft and 40 ft being the most common internationally used measurements. Even now, the argument on optimum size has not been entirely laid to rest. Some speculate that the 20 ft and 40 ft boxes that are such a common site worldwide could soon be threatened by the 53 ft container prevalent in the US domestic transport system, although the issue is a controversial one.

Transport concept that changed the world

Container ships, and their seamless integration with onshore transport systems, have been the key element in globalisation, it has been persuasively argued. Before the container came into international use, the costs of ocean freight and port handling – not to mention the time and uncertainties involved – were such that international trade in goods made no economic sense.

In modern times, the construction of specialized container vessels and the economies of scale introduced by ever larger ships have offered massive reductions in the cost of transporting goods. The cost of moving goods has become almost negligible as a portion of the production cost. With such an efficient system of transport, in many cases products can be sourced from virtually anywhere without adding to expense.

One obvious result of the container shipping revolution has been to strongly facilitate China’s rise as the world’s factory. But the ripples of containerisation have spread far wider. For example, through reduction of idle warehouse time and faster delivery to customers it has promoted smarter and more precise business practices among manufacturers and retailers. New businesses have sprung up all over the globe, encouraged by the ability of their products to be successful in markets thousands of miles away.
Modern container vessels are at the centre of a very sophisticated industry. While the vessels themselves are highly automated, computers ashore determine loading and unloading sequences of boxes long in advance. The precise position in which the container is to be stacked ashore and the arrangements for land transport to deliver it to the door of the receiver are likewise pre-programmed. This highly efficient system has brought a new degree of reliability to global supply chains, allowing local manufacturers and high street shops to place orders from the other side of the globe with confidence that their goods will arrive safely and on time.

Read more: History of Container Shipping


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