The Capacity Has Exceeded Maersk's 100,000 TEU! MSC Builds 14 More LNG Neo-Panamax Container Ships

The world's largest liner company Mediterranean Shipping (MSC) has reached an agreement with New Era Shipbuilding to build 14 LNG-powered dual-fuel neo-panamax container ships. It is reported that the total value of the newbuildings will exceed 1.68 billion US dollars. In other words, each ship will cost $120 million and will be equipped with Type B tanks. It is worth mentioning that the new ship order does not include alternative orders.

According to shipbuilding sources, New Era Shipbuilding is one of the three shipyards approached by MSC. South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries and Qingdao Beihai Heavy Industries have both received orders. The former is expected to have 6 vessels and the latter is expected to have 8 vessels.

MSC, New Age's first-time customer, has also built four 13,000TEU vessels for Chartworld Shipping and seven 7,000TEU vessels for Greek owner Chartworld Shipping for delivery between 2023 and 2024. Vessels with a capacity of 7,000 to 8,000 TEU are increasingly popular as they can be deployed on medium-haul trade routes such as the Far East to the Persian Gulf in the Middle East, forcing the 4,000 to 5,000 TEU vessels currently serving the route to be phased out.

This means that New Era Shipbuilding will win the largest shipbuilding contract in history. At the same time, due to the sufficient flexibility of Neo-Panamax container ships, the total number of orders for container ship owners in this segment also exceeded 100. In addition, according to previous reports from the shipping industry network, Sespan, Dexiang Shipping, X-Press Feeders, Danaos Shipping and CMA CGM have all ordered container ships of the same type.

According to the latest data from ALPHALINER, after the Mediterranean Shipping (MSC) officially surpassed Maersk to become the world's largest liner company on January 6, the capacity gap between the two has recently expanded to 100,000 TEU. In the next few months, the two liner giants will The capacity gap between the two countries may further expand to more than 500,000 TEU.

The latest data from ALPHALINER on April 19 shows that the total operating capacity of Mediterranean Shipping is 4,351,960 TEU, while that of Maersk is 4,248,120 TEU, and the gap between the two is 102,840 TEU (this data does not include the latest order for this news). Up to now, MSC operates 664 containers, including 325 self-owned ships with a value of 1,710,680 TEU; and 339 leased ships with a value of 2,641,280 TEU.

Another data shows that the number of orders for Mediterranean Shipping is far ahead in the industry, with a total of 88 ships of 1,240,486 TEU. It is particularly worth mentioning that since August 2020, Mediterranean Shipping has purchased a total of about 186 container ships from the second-hand ship market, becoming the largest second-hand container ship buyer in the container shipping market.

It is understood that Mediterranean Shipping was established in 1970 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland in 1978. As the leader of the world's container liner companies, Mediterranean Shipping has developed from one ship to a world-renowned company that controls more than 660 ships and more than 100,000 employees. enterprise. At present, MSC has a business network of 524 offices around the world, with a fleet covering 500 ports on 230 shipping routes, delivering about 2,300 TEU per year.

In addition, last weekend, Taiwanese shipowner Yang Ming Shipping announced that it would order five 15,000TEU-class container ships powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) dual-fuel.