TRIESTE – At 12:30 today the container ship MSC Diana called at Pier VII of the Port of Trieste, setting an operational record for the port.
At 400 metres in length, 59 metres in beam and with a capacity of around 19,000 TEU, the vessel is the largest ever handled at the Trieste Marine Terminal quays in terms of overall operational effort.
Arriving from Singapore, the ship will remain in Trieste until Wednesday evening. Around 4,200 total moves are scheduled, including both discharge and load operations. The call has a significant employment impact: over three days, more than 1,000 worker deployments are expected, for an estimated total of around 6,000 working hours.
After MSC Diana, a further vessel of around 370 metres in length is expected at Pier VII. A call by the New York, with dimensions similar to Diana’s, is also scheduled thereafter, confirming a particularly busy phase for Trieste’s container terminal.
From early April, the new regular MSC Dragon service will start, linking the Far East, the Mediterranean and the U.S. East Coast. Trieste will be included in the rotation as the first Mediterranean port after Singapore, with a fixed weekly call.
«The arrival of MSC Diana has a very significant employment impact: the figures for this call show it clearly. It is traffic that generates direct jobs in the port, also thanks to the contribution of the Port Labour Agency, and it comes at a time when the share of full containers is also improving, meaning flows increasingly tied to destination markets. In this context», commented Marco Consalvo, President of the Eastern Adriatic Sea Port System Authority, «the launch of the Dragon service in April will further strengthen growth prospects for traffic, especially on the export side».
