Partner Shipping will introduce its third RoRo vessel on the NAPA service in February 2010. The new-building, M/V Ocean Challenger, has been chartered on long term basis by Partner Shipping from owner, Mitsui & Co in Japan.

The M/V Ocean Challenger is built and designed according to 6.400 RT cars capacity and with ample RoRo decks. The vessel size represents the future capacity needed to cope with the increasing demand for capacity and frequency amongst the NAPA customers.

Helge Helvik, Commercial Director of Partner Shipping, stated that “the Chrysler contract acquisition in December 2009 was also an important and decisive factor for us to add more capacity and frequency on the service. We will increase the schedule frequency of the NAPA service to every 20 days and capacity by more than 30%”.

Partner Shipping and its partner, Praxis Logistics, aim at introducing a fourth vessel on the NAPA  service within 2010, providing existing and new customers with a twice monthly service between Mexico, USA, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore Australia and New Zeeland.

With this new and high-quality built Japanese vessel, Partner Shipping would like to emphasize its clear aim to provide highly efficient and environmentally friendly logistic solutions at lean cost.   

We expect that the Ocean Challenger and its crew will contribute to our zero damage statistics for the NAPA service, and further strengthen the positive reputation of the service in the market.

“With a length of 200 meters, she is amongst the larger PCTC vessels built and also represents a state of the art efficient vessel both in terms of fuel consumption and economical speed. We are pleased to welcome M/V Ocean Challenger into our fleet and the Napa service as from February, says Lars Ingeberg, Managing Director of Partner Shipping”.