#DublinPort - The brand new Delphine made a maiden call to Dublin Port, the giant ship is a sister of leadship Celine, claimed to be the world’s largest short-sea ro-ro freightship, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The Celine of 74,000 gross tonnage is now equally partnered with Delphine's debut. The newbuild arrived from Zeebrugge, Belgium but firstly anchored in Dublin Bay to wait for Celine's departure from the port. This took place last Thursday evening.

The sisters operated by CLdN Ro Ro SA /Cobelfret Ferries serve the Rotterdam-Zeebrugge-Dublin route which is also connected to a UK port. 

Delphine has an impressive 8,000 freight lane metres and can handle 600 freight units. The South Korean built Delphine boosts capacity to Celine and together provide Irish exporters with greater flexibility by trading with markets in continental Europe, particularly against the backdrop of post-Brexit.

Luxembourg based CLdN also offers connections from the European mainland, Scandinavia and Iberia.

Delphine's inaugural call to the Irish port's Alexandra Basin is from where the 234m ro-ro docked at the custom-built ro-ro ramp linkspan.

On the occasion of Celine's first call in October last year, the ship instead docked in Alexandra Basin (East). The change to the new ro-ro linkspan took place the next month allowing smaller fleetmates also serving to continue to use the adjacent basin facility.  

The Maltese flagged Delphine has a beam of 35m and the cargo decks are all accessed through an aft vehicle loading/unloading ramp. Cargoes using the ship's ro-ro ramp includes unaccompanied trailers, tank containers, project cargo, new cars.

In addition accommodation is available for 12 driver accompanied units.