Hyundai Heavy Industries announced on June 11 that it has received approval in principle (AIP) for SkyBench from Norway’s Det Norske Veritas Germanischer Lloyd (DNV GL), the largest ship and offshore classification society in the world.
SkyBench is a mobile accommodation block that is mounted on rails and wheels for maximizing the cargo loading capacity of large container ships. The innovative design has broken the stereotype that cabins cannot be movable in a ship. The company has completed the registration for a patent and trademark under the name SkyBench.
The cabin, in the form of a bridge, can move over the span of 13m-long container bays. The SkyBench allows for additional storage, as it utilizes the void space beneath the sliding block, unlike existing fixed cabins.
Also, a 19,000 TEU container ship with SkyBench can extend its cargo loading capacity by 450 TEU.
When shipping companies operate this ship on the Europe-Asian route, they are expected to secure an additional 67 billion won (US$60.27 million) on the assumption that the container ship operates for 25 years, which is the average life span of a ship, and does 2.7 billion won ($2.43 million) worth of shipping per year.