WWL names new vehicle carrier in Melbourne ceremony

The ceremony for the Tujica featured Andrea Schrempp, wife of Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific chief executive Wolfgang Schrempp, as the lady sponsor.

Built at the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering yard in Korea, the Tijuca can carry up to 8000 cars or a combination of 3500 cars and more than 450 trucks and buses.

She boasts reinforced and moveable vehicle decks,  a  320-tonne capacity stern ramp and increased capacity for high and heavy rolling cargoes such as agricultural, mining and construction machinery and non-containerised and static cargoes such as power generation and mining equipment.

Tijuca will replace an older and smaller vessel in the WWL Australia service.

This service provides six sailings a month from Europe, including four direct from North America.

"Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics has been calling on Australia and the port of Melbourne for more than a 100 years," WWL Australia regional director Greg Martin said.

"The introduction of Tijuca demonstrates our continued commitment to offering our customers exceptional service.

"Together with our modern technical services facilities and supply chain management capabilities we are able to provide customers with a cost-effective supply chain."

Mr Martin added that WWL was working  with the Port of Melbourne Corporation in evaluating terminal requirements "for our next generation Mark V ro-ro vessels, to be launched in 2011, and for the longer term in the port of Melbourne".

WWL said the new ship's design would reduce CO2 emissions by 15% per transported unit, as well as reducing emissions of SOx and particulate matters.

Tijuca also had a very low NOx emission engine which is able to use bunkers with as low as 1% of sulphur content.

"This dramatically improves her performance, reducing NOx emissions 35% below current international regulations," the company said.