Norwegian container ship firm MPC Container Ships (MPCC) has placed orders for two 1,300-TEU newbuildings at China’s Taizhou Sanfu Ship Engineering for delivery H2 2024
The dual-fuel setup will enable operation on methanol as well as conventional MGO, allowing MPCC to take a significant leap forward in its commitment to use carbon-neutral solutions in regional container trades.
The two ships will go on 15-year time charters to North Sea Container Line (NCL).
Each vessel is priced at US$39M, and according to MPCC, the cost will be covered by the contracted cash flows from the 15-year time charter with NCL at an initial rate of €~16,/day (US$16,650), before adjusting for inflation.
The project was awarded Nkr13.7M (US$1.36M) by Enova, the state-owned Electrification of Maritime Transport programme, owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, and Nkr60M (US$5.95M) from the NOx fund, the Norwegian business sector’s fund to reduce emissions.
The vessels will be majority owned by MPCC (90.1%) together with Topeka MPC Maritime (9.9%), a joint venture between Topeka Holding and MPC Capital.
MPCC chief executive Constantin Baack said, “Together with our partners NCL and Elkem, this project allows us to set up a green transport corridor in northern Europe, proving our ability to identify and execute on opportunities that are accretive while allowing us to make the right move towards further decarbonisation of the fleet.”
“With this project, we continue to execute our selective growth strategy while mitigating residual value risk and renewing our fleet. The economics of this deal will support MPCC’s distribution potential from 2024 onwards.”
Last November, MPCC reached an agreement with Hamburg Commercial Bank to divest six ships and complete a new secured credit facility for US$180M.
