The largest containership to ever call at the Port of Liverpool has arrived. The 6,552 TEU* ‘HS Paris’ berthed at the Liverpool2 deep-water container terminal on Monday 6th March.

Previously, the Port of Liverpool’s existing container terminal could only accommodate vessels up to 4500TEU. The HM Paris is the first post-Panamax** vessel to call at Liverpool following the phase 1 opening of Liverpool2 in November 2016.

Mark Whitworth, Chief Executive of Peel Ports Group, said: “This is a huge milestone for Peel Ports and the Port of Liverpool. The whole team is delighted to welcome HS Paris to the city for the first time. While we have the capacity to handle vessels up to 20,000 TEU, smaller post-Panamax ships are still very much part of our overall strategy and it’s essential that can accommodate those too. We can now do that thanks to our £400m investment at Liverpool2, providing a shorter route to market for UK importers and exporters, which reduces their costs, congestion and carbon emissions.”

Peel Ports recently announced that it had secured 150 advocates for its Cargo200 initiative. The campaign calls on importers and exporters whose goods begin or end their journey in the north of the UK to switch delivery of ocean freight from south-east ports to the centrally-located Port of Liverpool. It’s estimated that the initiative could save UK plc up to £200 million by 2020. It also aims to cut freight mileage by 200 million miles by 2020.

* TEU means twenty-foot equivalent unit, i.e. the size of an average shipping container.

** post-Panamax is a designation within the shipping industry for vessels that could not fit through the former Panama Canal, prior to its expansion last year.