Things I learnt this week

[John Arton]

Panama Canal.
The new third lane for the Panama Canal will open in 2015. Two new sets of locks have been built (one each end) the dimensions being 426.72 x 54.86x 18.29 metres.
Largest vessel that the locks can take is 366LOA x 49 mtrs beam x 15.29 mtrs draft.
No mules, tugs will be used to get these in and out of the lock.
Dredging of channels and raising the level of the Gatun lakes to accommodate these involved raising the dam at Gatun Lake to its maximum
A new 2.3km dam will be built to separate the waters of Miraflores lake from the Pacific.
The new locks are filled and emptied by gravity and incorporate water saving basins.
US Trade
54% of all container trade to the USA goes to West Coast ports.
When the new canal opens the East Coast and Gulf ports will be able to take advantage of these 12,500 teu ships sailing directly to the East Coast ports instead of goods having to be transhipped by rail from the west coast.
Although the voyage length from Far East to East Coast USA will still be longer than Far East to west coast USA and thence via rail to the east coast, savings will be made due to West Coast ports are often congested and suffer from labour disputes meaning that the intermodal transportation has a bottle neck at these ports with subsequent delays.
Many East coast ports are putting billions into new cranes, raising the height of bridges to allow these bigger container ships to access there terminals (New York 1.3 billion to raise the height of the Bayonne bridge from 151 ft to 215 feet.
Gulf ports are also spending huge amounts of money upgrading their facilities.
A knock on effect will be in places like Kingston Jamaica, that already can handle these super sized ships and will in effect become super hub ports.
Container ships
Maersk's first triple E class has just been delivered. This bemouth is 18.500 teu's and is too big for even the enlarged Panama canal, but will be transiting Suez.
Container ships have almost reached the maximum possible beam, which is limited to how big an outreach can you build a container crane to plus the infrastructure needed in the ports.
These beasts are steaming around at a slower speed than previous generations of container vessels and their sheer size and number of containers carried means that economies of scale similar to that obtained by VLCC tankers are obtained.
Refrigerated containers
Hamburg Sud have got a new class of container ships that can carry 2100 refrigerated containers.
Excellent web site
clippingnews@maasmondmaritime.com
Free to sign up to and you get daily updates on any shipping articles that appear in the daily news and trade magazines.
Food and drink
The U.K. consumes 25 million Bananas per year
Sainsbury's meat suppliers butcher 4000 animal weekly
The most popular cut of meat brought in Sainsbury's is a steak.
Every steak is hand cut by teams of butchers and all are 500 grms to within less than 1% error, no machines involved beyond those that seal the containers after the butchers have placed the steaks in the trays.
If buying a pre-packed steak, do not buy one that is blood red, it has already started to go off due to the proteins in the meat re-acting with oxygen, apparently if the meat has a purple colour then that means it is really fresh.
Food facts gleaned from Greg Wallace program on BBC, " How supermarkets deliver their goods to you" or some such title. On during the week on BBC2 in the morning.
HURRAH THE LIONS, WHO NEEDS O'DRISCOLL.
rgds
JA

[ray-c]

I wouldn't eat fresh steak, it has to be at least 30 days aged, 34, 35 days, is better, melt in you mouth,
like eating hot ice cream., but each too his own.

[John Arton]

Regarding the steaks
Cannot remember if the meat had been hung before being cut up or whether after being sliced into the steaks etc. it then went into storage before being delivered after a certain period of time to the supermarkets. I would hazard a guess that the whole carcass would be hung before butchering. took place.
Regarding Bananas
The show actually went on board the, so they said, biggest banana boat going, the Star something, (looked very like one of Blue Stars latest reefers , Blue Star the German outfit with almost the same funnel as our Blue Star line had). The process of unloading them and then getting them into temp. controlled warehouses around the Southampton area (where she was docked) was pretty amazing. They took you into these warehouses for both the meat and Bananas and they make the old dockside sheds in the Royal Docks or Liverpool docks, look like sheds in your garden. Huge great things holding 10's of thousands of cases of green bananas being ripened slowly so as they can be delivered at exactly the right stage of ripeness to go on the supermarket shelf.
The whole program and its subsequent episodes is a real eye opener on how food gets from grower to shelf and the extent that the major supermarkets go in food testing and introducing new or improved products.
By the way the most brought pre-packed meal brought in U.K. supermarkets is...
LASAGNE
rgds
JA

[robpage]

The carcass , in the case of beef is quartered and hung by the leg of the quarter for 7 - 40 days , in temperatures around 5 degree . I would disagree with the chef and say fresher is redder and it darkens to a purple colour as it ages . Game needs at least a week hanging to develop flavour , birds hung by the neck .