On a sunny summer afternoon, workers at the Port of Felixstowe, the busiest container port in the UK, put the finishing touches to the new berths eight and nine, designed to handle ships far bigger than even the biggest on order.
Across the water from the new berths, the port’s existing berths regularly handle ships – such as Maersk Line’s E-Class ships, that carry 15,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers – with nearly twice the capacity of the biggest vessels seven years ago.
The scene at Felixstowe illustrates a scale revolution that continues to transform container shipping, the backbone of the globalised world’s logistics system.