MODERN Terminals' facilities at Terminal 9 (south) has accommodated the largest containership to call at the port of Hong Kong to date - the 23,656 TEU MSC Isabella. Modern Terminals Ltd group managing director Peter Levesque said in a statement: "We are proud to have MSC Isabella, a magnificent container vessel, at our facilities. Setting a new milestone for the port of Hong Kong. "Modern Terminals is a member of the Hong Kong Seaport Alliance (HKSPA) and the combined facilities of HKSPA can handle eight mega vessels simultaneously which provides the kind of flexibility the large shipping lines want." The MSC Isabella is deployed on the Asia-North Europe Swan service operated by the 2M Alliance on a port rotation of: Qingdao, Busan, Ningbo, Yantian, Tanjung Pelepas, Rotterdam, Felixstowe, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Tanger Med, Algeciras, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, returning to Qingdao. Mediterranean Shipping Company's regional managing director for Asia Y J Tan said: "We are pleased to have our biggest, most technologically advanced and energy efficient class of vessels calling at the port of Hong Kong. MSC Isabella and her new sister ships show MSC's continued investment and commitment towards facilitating global trade." MSC Isabella is the sister ship of MSC Gulsun, the world's largest containership, and forms part of a new class of 23,000+ TEU vessels to be added in 2019-2020 to the global shipping network of MSC. These 11 ships have been designed with a wide range of environmental, efficiency and safety matters in mind. For example, the shape of the bow has been designed to enhance energy efficiency by reducing hull resistance. State-of-the-art engineering minimises wind resistance, resulting in lower fuel consumption. To comply with the upcoming International Maritime Organization's low sulphur marine fuel regulation in 2020, the ship is equipped with an IMO-approved hybrid exhaust gas cleaning system and has the option of switching to low-sulphur fuel, or to be adapted for liquefied natural gas in the future.