Maersk to place $1.7b container ship order

Maersk Line is currently in talks with South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. (DSME) for an order of 11 ultra-large container ships, worth around $1.7 billion.

The Korean company is close to winning an order for some 11 container ships of 20,000 TEU (20-foot equivalent units) from Maersk for about $151 million per vessel or more, South Korean newspaper Korea Economic Daily reported last week, citing unnamed shipbuilding industry sources and foreign media.

British ship broking house Clarkson also confirmed the deal, which is worth $1.66 billion in total. The ships would be delivered in 2017, Clarkson said in a shipping industry report on Friday.

The spokesman for DSME declined to confirm or deny other details, adding that nothing has been decided. “Maersk Line never comments on rumors,” a spokesman from Maersk Line, the container shipping unit in Danish conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk, said.

In 2011 DSME won orders from Maersk totaling $3.9 billion for 20 Triple –E container ship, which at the time were the largest container vessels ever ordered. The last two vessels from this order are set to be delivered by July 2015.

After the initial Maersk order in 2011, other major shipping companies soon followed suit by updating their fleet with newer, larger capacity container vessels.

So far this year Costco Holdings announced it would place in order for at least ten 19,000 TEU vessels and Orient Oversees Container Lines similarly placed an order for the largest container vessels, six 21,000TEU newbuildings from Samsung Heavy Industries.



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