Ocean giants regularly visit the port. In October, the world's largest car carrier, the Höegh Aurora, docked at Zeebrugge. This has room for 9,100 cars on board. Or does it?
We express the capacity of a RORO ship, which you use to ship vehicles and other rolling stock, in CEU. This stands for Car Equivalent Unit. One CEU is room for one car. The Höegh Aurora has a capacity of 9,100 CEU, doing 600 CEU better than the previous record holder, Höegh Target. Still, that doesn't mean you can drive as many cars aboard. Why is that?
The size of a CEU is based on a Toyota Corona RT43 ... from the 1960s. Back then, cars were much smaller than they are today. A CEU equates to 4.125 metres long and 1.55 metres wide. Today, the average car in Europe is almost half a metre longer and about thirty centimetres wider. Moreover, in addition to cars, the Höegh Aurora also transports a great many other vehicles, such as trucks and vans. So to get nine thousand modern cars on board, you would have to seriously cram them in.
The larger a ship, the more cars or containers it can carry. As a result, the average price of transportation drops. Moreover, this also reduces average CO2 emissions. Although there are unwritten limits on the dimensions of a ship. The largest container ships are not getting longer anymore, otherwise they could hardly enter enough ports.
This is why many ships today focus on draught. The more a ship carries, the deeper it is in the water. This makes it important for the water at the port to be deep enough. In July, the Ever Greet, the container ship with the largest draught ever, docked at Port of Antwerp-Bruges. The ship sat as much as 16.30 metres in the water. Sailing ten centimetres deeper will allow the ship to carry several hundred more containers.
