Big Volga At Anchor Off Freo

It’s been quite a week at Fremantle’s inner harbour. First we had a Royal affair, with two cruise ships in port: Queen Elizabeth on Monday and, hot on her heels, Crown Princess on Tuesday. Both arrived early morning and departed later the same day.

And today, CMA CGM Volga, the largest container ship by TEU volume (twenty-foot equivalent unit containers) has arrived and is currently at anchor in Gage Roads awaiting her call to enter the inner harbour and berth at North Quay.

We will bring you pics of her once she arrives proper. In the meantime here’s a great drone shot of Volga at Port Melbourne.

CMA CGM Volga in Melbourne. Supplied Fremantle Ports

The 9-year old CMA CGM Volga is just shy of 300m in length (that’s the equivalent length of three rugby pitches). She is 48.2m wide and has a dead weight of 116,422 tonnes and sails under the flag of Malta.

She can carry 10,622 containers, whereas typically the largest-capacity container ships visiting Fremantle are in the vicinity of 8,500 – 9,500 TEU.
During her visit the Volga is expected to unload, load or shift around 2500 containers, with the remainder in transit.

Manager Communications and Community at the Port, Neil Stanbury said that: ‘Fremantle could cater for ships up to 350m in length. We frequently receive ships longer than the Volga, but this ship’s configuration allows it to carry a larger payload than most and the visit not only showcases our port’s capability to handle such vessels but also Fremantle’s container terminal capacity and efficiency.’

The ship, operating as part of ANL’s AAXS Service, will be at the Patrick Container Terminal 3, on North Quay and will later leave for Port Klang, Malaysia.

If you are able to catch Volga coming or going, it will be a treat. Laden container ships like her entering or leaving the Port look a little like large apartment buildings wending their way through the harbour!

We should add by way of information that, while large, the CMA CGM Volga isn’t the biggest container ship going around. Not in the Top 10, or even the Top 20.

The Top 10, to be found elsewhere than Freo because they are too long for Freo, are around 400m in length, as this table shows. These biggies have a capacity of around 16,000-18,000 TEU compared with Volga’s nearly 11,000 TEU.

In passing, folks, we are also told Fremantle’s container trade has been strong this 2024/2025 financial year, handling 82,808 containers in September alone, up 13,441 more than expected for the month.

Financial year to date, Fremantle has handled over 223,000 TEU. Last year, Fremantle handled 856,526 containers for the whole year to 30 June, so things are on track for a big year at the port.

By Jean Hudson @jeansodyssey. Jean is our Shipping Correspondent and also a regular feature writer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may also like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.

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