Post-Panamax

Post-Panamax is a vessel too large to pass the original Panama Canal locks, exceeding the 32.31 m beam or 294.13 m length that defined Panamax. The term first marked container ships built beyond the old locks from the late 1980s, and it now covers bulk carriers, tankers, and boxships above that envelope. The 2016 canal expansion shifted the reference: the new Neopanamax locks admit ships up to 366 m by 51.25 m by 15.2 m, so a vessel can be post-Panamax for the old locks yet still transit the new ones. Ships larger than the Neopanamax limit, the largest ULCVs, remain barred from the canal.