GERMAN international shipping and container transportation company Hapag-Lloyd has doubled its container ship order, commissioning a South Korean shipyard to build six more mega-vessels at a cost of US$852 million.
Each of the container ships will have a capacity of more than 23,500 TEU. That's the same size as the six ultra-large ships Hapag-Lloyd ordered at the end of 2020 from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, reports New York's FreightWaves.
The order does not come as a surprise. Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said on the ocean carrier's first-quarter earnings call that the order book was 'unsustainably low' and that the company would be in the market for new container ships.
Also in May, Hapag-Lloyd added 60,000 TEU to the 150,000 standard and refrigerated boxes it ordered a month earlier to combat what it called 'severe imbalances' caused by a shortage of containers around the world.
The shipping line said in its announcement the new container ships will be outfitted with 'a state-of-the-art high-pressure dual-fuel engine that will be extremely fuel efficient. Their engines will operate on LNG but the vessels will also have sufficient tank capacity to operate on conventional fuel as an alternative.
'Hapag-Lloyd is focusing on liquefied natural gas as a medium-term solution as it reduces CO2 emissions by around 15 to 25 per cent and emissions of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter by more than 90 per cent. Fossil LNG is currently the most promising fuel on the path towards zero emissions,' it said. 'The medium-term goal is to have ships that operate in a climate-neutral way using synthetic natural gas.'
The shipping line said the six vessels are being financed via a 'syndicated green loan,' which means the transaction was concluded in accordance with green loan principles of the Loan Market Association to fund environmentally friendly projects.
Delivery of the newbuilds, which will be deployed on the Europe-Far East routes as part of THE Alliance, is expected to begin in 2024. Hapag-Lloyd will take delivery of its six ultra-large container ships ordered in December in 2023.
Hapag-Lloyd said it currently has a fleet of 241 container ships with a total transport capacity of 1.7 million TEU.
SeaNews Turkey
Each of the container ships will have a capacity of more than 23,500 TEU. That's the same size as the six ultra-large ships Hapag-Lloyd ordered at the end of 2020 from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, reports New York's FreightWaves.
The order does not come as a surprise. Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said on the ocean carrier's first-quarter earnings call that the order book was 'unsustainably low' and that the company would be in the market for new container ships.
Also in May, Hapag-Lloyd added 60,000 TEU to the 150,000 standard and refrigerated boxes it ordered a month earlier to combat what it called 'severe imbalances' caused by a shortage of containers around the world.
The shipping line said in its announcement the new container ships will be outfitted with 'a state-of-the-art high-pressure dual-fuel engine that will be extremely fuel efficient. Their engines will operate on LNG but the vessels will also have sufficient tank capacity to operate on conventional fuel as an alternative.
'Hapag-Lloyd is focusing on liquefied natural gas as a medium-term solution as it reduces CO2 emissions by around 15 to 25 per cent and emissions of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter by more than 90 per cent. Fossil LNG is currently the most promising fuel on the path towards zero emissions,' it said. 'The medium-term goal is to have ships that operate in a climate-neutral way using synthetic natural gas.'
The shipping line said the six vessels are being financed via a 'syndicated green loan,' which means the transaction was concluded in accordance with green loan principles of the Loan Market Association to fund environmentally friendly projects.
Delivery of the newbuilds, which will be deployed on the Europe-Far East routes as part of THE Alliance, is expected to begin in 2024. Hapag-Lloyd will take delivery of its six ultra-large container ships ordered in December in 2023.
Hapag-Lloyd said it currently has a fleet of 241 container ships with a total transport capacity of 1.7 million TEU.
SeaNews Turkey
