Yantian international wharf of Shenzhen, a special economic zone in south China's Guangdong Province, received on Thursday morning the world largest container vessel for the first time.

Leaving Shenzhen the same day, Emma Maersk is on its maiden voyage, which will call at 17 harbors in Europe and Asia including Yantian.

Workers at Yantian wharf used 10 cranes to unload 6,421 containers from Emma Maersk, local harbor management authorities said.

Emma Maersk was built at the end of August by the Denmark-based Odense Steel Shipyard Ltd. for the AP Moller-Maersk Group headquartered in Copenhagen. The 397.71-meter-long mammoth vessel is capable of accommodating 11,000 standard containers with a total tonnage of more than 170,000 tons.

Between January and September, Yantian wharf recorded a turnover of more than six million containers, or almost half of Shenzhen's total, up 12 percent over the same period of last year, the authorities said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 6, 2006)