Confetti showers and access stairs to climb on board this ocean giant.

Confetti showers and access stairs to climb on board this ocean giant.

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Hapag-Lloyd group

Ship naming ceremony

“We hereby name you – Kyoto Express”

As you might remember from old movies, ships are “christ­ened” in a naming ceremony. Welkam coordinated just such an event at a port in Yoko­hama, Japan.

Welkam helped coordinating the positioning of a visitor tent and gangways, and supervised the simultaneous timing of effects and confetti showers with the crash and splash of the champagne bottle onto the ship. Hapag-Lloyd realized that Welkam’s expertise in the nuances of cross-cultural communication came in handy, even in the internationalized English-speaking shipping industry.

Date: November 18, 2005
Size: 200m2 (2152 ft2)
Location: Yokohama, Japan

About The Client

The Hapag-Lloyd group is a Hamburg-based global con­tainer liner shipping company, one of the top five in the world. The Kyoto Express, named after the former Japanese capital, is one of the world’s biggest container ships at 335 meters in length.