MSC CHULAI III

Freo Today. 1 August 2025. Container ships arriving and departing Fremantle are always an impressive sight. Apart from anything else, one wonders how all those containers stay put throughout a voyage! Here’s the container ship MSC CHULAI III on the right in this photograph. The JOGELA is immediately in front of her, on the left. MSC CHULAI III arrived in Fremantle from Hong Kong a couple days ago and last night departed for Adelaide. The vessel is now 20 years old and has had a few names over the years: SITC CHULAI, BOMAR AURORA, LOUDS ISLAND, FRISIA KOPENHAGEN and COSCO KARACHI. She’s a relatively small container ship. Her length is 215.13 metres, width 29.95 metres and she has a draught of around 7.7 metres. Her gross tonnage is 27,915. She has a capacity of around 2,500 TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit). The JOGELA, by contrast, has a capacity nearly double that, just under 5,000 TEU. By way of interest, the very latest ULCS container ships – Ultra Large – have a capacity of more than 20,000 TEU. However, we won’t be seeing any of these in Freo any time soon as they simply won’t fit in Port! The MSC CHULAI III is currently managed under the MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) umbrella, one of the world’s largest container shipping lines, and sails under the flag of Panama. Btw, MSC’s offices at the corner of Cliff and Phillimore Streets, Fremantle are among the most impressive in Freo, as our 2017 feature story by Pia Smith explains.