Evergreen Maritime creates New World Record of Airbag ship launching weight

On February 20th, 2022, one DWT 58,000 piling ship named “Yong Jian 3000” was successfully launched with 102 pieces of Evergreen marine airbags in Jiangsu Taizhou, China. It took one and a half minutes for the ship to start moving until it floated in the sea, completing around 220 meters of travel distance. The ship’s launching weight reached 25,000 tons, making it the heaviest ship ever launched with marine airbags in the world. The new generation of Evergreen Maritime marine airbags fully demonstrated their excellent lifting capacity and stable performance in this launching project.

“Yong Jian 3000” measures 170 meters long, 42.8 meters wide, and 13 meters deep with a 3000-ton lifting capacity. It was built by Jiangsu Dayang Marine Equipment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation. The concrete launching ramp consisted of 80 meters of flat and 100 meters of slope: 80 meters with a 1/80 angle and 20 meters with a 1/50 angle. The average keel block height reached 1.4 meters, which is considered quite high for an airbag ship launching, especially using airbags with only 1.8 meters diameter. Eversafe Marine, the subsidiary of Evergreen Maritime Group, took the general contract for the launching. For this project, a total of 102 pieces of Evergreen marine airbags and four sets of 100-ton pulling winches were deployed. A team of 14 people, four forklifts, and two cranes undertook the entire launching operation. It took around three days to lift the vessel with marine airbags and remove the support blocks. The final launching was performed at high tide, at 7 AM on February 20th. By cutting holding wires, the ship started to move slowly, then accelerated gradually with a joyful rhythm, entering into water until it floated smoothly. During the entire launching process, not one airbag was damaged or lost—an achievement that can be called a perfect launch.

As the leader in marine airbag manufacturing and airbag engineering, Qingdao Evergreen Maritime has been committed to the application of new materials and new technologies for ship launching airbags, promoting airbag ship launching technology to be applied in higher-end and broader fields. The successful launching of the 25,000-ton ship is a staged victory and, at the same time, a new starting point for Evergreen Maritime to move towards a higher peak.