With the Fernao de Magalhaes Alianca has christened the second of four identical new container ships for its cabotage fleet. The Naming Ceremony was held at the container port of Porto Chibatao on the Rio Negro in Manaus. The Sponsor of the ship is Dioneia Thomas, the wife of Julian Thomas, who is General Manager Region South America East Coast of Hamburg Sud and Alianca. Dr. h.c. August Oetker, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Oetker Group and Partner of Dr. August Oetker KG, and Dr. Ottmar Gast, Chairman of the Executive Board of Hamburg Sud, also took part in the ceremony.

With the container ship Fernao de Magalhaes the Hamburg Sud subsidiary Alianca is continuining to modernise its cabotage service fleet. Like the Sebastiao Caboto, which was named in Santos in May, the newbuild is one of four ships from the so-called explorer series built by the Shanghai Shipyard Co. Ltd. With a slot capacity of 3,800 TEU the newbuilds have almost twice the number of container slots as the previous Alianca ships employed on this service. The newbuilds extend the transportation capacity of Alianca, whilst setting new standards for fuel savings and environmental responsibility. Alianca is convinced that the advantages of cabotage over land transportation will be made even greater by the introduction of the new ships.

Aliança is the market leader in cabotage. Last year its transport volume for this service was around 120,000 TEU. Of this, significantly more than half the containers " around 69,000 TEU " were processed in Manaus. In 2012 around 41 per cent of incoming containers and 33 per cent of outgoing containers in Manaus were loaded by Alianca.

The Fernao de Magalhaes carries the name of the famous Portuguese explorer who in 1520 discovered the long-sought passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific between the South American continent and Tierra del Fuego. This passage was later named after him as the Magellan Straits. The last two ships in this series will also carry the names of important South American explorers.