Eric Haun is editor of Marine News. He has covered the commercial maritime and...

The CMA CGM Group last week received the largest vessel of its fleet, a 17,722 TEU containership CMA CGM Kerguelen, to be christened May 12 in Le Havre.

CMA CGM Kerguelen measures 398 meters long and 54 meters wide, making it the largest container ship in the CMA CGM fleet. It has capacity for 17,722 twenty-foot equivalent containers.

CMA CGM KERGUELEN will be positioned in the shipper’s French Asia Line, which links Europe to Asia. Thus, the ship will export consumer products (fruit, cheese and meat), luxury products (perfumes, wines and spirits, leather goods, etc.) as well as industrial products (industry automotive, electronics, aeronautics, etc.) to markets such as Asia and the Middle East.

The first in a series of six ships of the same size that will be delivered this year, CMA CGM Kerguelen was named after the 18th century French navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec who discovered an archipelago of islands that was later named Archipelago Kerguelen.