On September 15, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering announced that it had signed a shipbuilding contract with a shipowner based in the British Virgin Islands for the construction of 4 container ships. The total contract value is 651.9 billion Korean won (approximately 470 million USD, 3.344 billion Chinese yuan), equivalent to a unit ship cost of 117.5 million USD.
These 4 new ships will be built at HD Hyundai Samho, located in Yeongam-gun, Jeollanam-do, and are scheduled to be delivered sequentially by the end of 2028. Foreign media reports indicate that this order for four 8,000 TEU conventional fuel container ships comes from the Singapore-registered shipowner Flex Box Shipping. This company was just registered in Singapore in April of this year. Its main business is vessel leasing with crew, and it also operates as a shipping agency. Its fleet consists of 17 vessels, including 15 container ships and 2 bulk carriers.
For reference, Clarksons’ data shows that the current newbuilding price for a 9,500 TEU conventional fuel container ship is approximately 106 million USD, an 8% increase from 98 million USD during the same period last year.
This is the fourth batch of container ship orders received by HD Hyundai Samho this year, bringing its total container ship orders for the year to 14 vessels, with a total value of approximately 1.92 billion USD (about 13.67 billion Chinese yuan).
On April 28, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering announced it had signed a shipbuilding contract with Capital Maritime, a core shipping company under Greek shipping magnate Evangelos Marinakis, for 4 x 8,400 TEU container ships. The total contract value was 560 million USD (approximately 4.04 billion Chinese yuan), equivalent to a unit ship cost of 140 million USD. The ships will be built at HD Hyundai Samho and are scheduled for delivery by the end of June 2028. On May 30, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering announced it had signed a contract with Capital Maritime for 2 x 8,400 TEU container ships. The total contract value was 386.8 billion Korean won (approximately 280 million USD, 2.02 billion Chinese yuan), equivalent to a unit ship cost of 140 million USD. The ships will be built at HD Hyundai Samho and are scheduled for delivery by the end of June 2028. On July 8, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering announced it had signed a shipbuilding contract with Korea’s Sinokor Merchant Marine for 4 container ships. The total contract value was 834.8 billion Korean won (approximately 610 million USD, 4.37 billion Chinese yuan), equivalent to a unit ship cost of 152.5 million USD. The ships will be built at HD Hyundai Samho and are scheduled to be delivered sequentially by the end of 2028.
At the beginning of this year, HD Hyundai Samho set an annual order target of 4.5 billion USD. So far, the value of new ship orders received by HD Hyundai Samho this year has reached 3.622 billion USD (approximately 25.8 billion Chinese yuan), achieving about 80.5% of its annual order target. These orders include 14 container ships, 2 crude oil carriers, 5 large LNG carriers, and 8 Suezmax crude oil carriers of 157,000 deadweight tons.
Including the 4 container ships from this latest order, the total orders received by HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering so far this year have reached 90 vessels, worth 12.2 billion USD (approximately 86.9 billion Chinese yuan). This represents about 67.7% of its annual order target of 18.05 billion USD (approximately 130 billion Chinese yuan). The orders consist of 5 LNG carriers, 6 LNG bunkering vessels, 56 container ships, 2 very large ethane carriers (VLEC), 12 oil tankers, 1 product tanker, and 8 liquefied ammonia carriers.
