News / Evergreen orders two dozen ships as newbuilding market sizzles

Taiwanese liner operator Evergreen Marine Corporation has ordered 24 container ships from Chinese shipbuilder CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding.

In a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing yesterday, Evergreen said that the order consists of eleven 3,000 teu ships, eleven 2,300 teu ships and two 1,800 teu ships.

The unit price of the vessels is between $28m and $51m, making an aggregate contract value between $958m and $1.1bn.

The newbuilding contract was signed by Evergreen’s Singapore-incorporated subsidiary, Evergreen Marine (Asia) Pte Ltd.

The vessel design will fit in with the International Maritime Organisation’s new emission regulations that will be effective from 2023. It is thought that the regulations will cause older ships to be phased out.

Linerlytica analyst Tan Hua Joo said that as freight rates stay historically high and shipyards hike prices to take advantage of demand, liner operators and non-operating ship owners will rush to order vessels to stay ahead of rising newbuilding prices, which have more than doubled from last year.

Evergreen ordered twenty 15,000 teu ships from Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) in March and two 24,000 teu ships from Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding in June. The company also has four 24,000 teu ships on order at Jiangnan Shipyard (Group), due for completion in 2022.

Up to the end of this year, Evergreen will take delivery of three 24,000 teu ships from SHI and one feeder ship from Hyundai Mipo Dockyard.

Evergreen, now the seventh largest liner operator, has a total operating capacity of 1.39m teu, comprising 116 owned ships and 87 chartered vessels.