South Korean leading container shipping liner Hyundai Merchant Marine Co. (HMM) has signed separate letters of intent (LOIs) with the country’s three major shipbuilders to build 20 container carriers by mid-2021.
HMM said it has signed LOIs with Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., and Samsung Heavy Industries Co. “to build eco-friendly mega containerships which fulfill its ‘Capacity of 1 Million TEU’ strategy.”
The three separate orders involve building twelve 23,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) and eight 14,000-TEU container carriers, reported Yonhap News Agency on June 15.
Hyundai Heavy Industries is expected to build eight 14,000-TEU container ships by the second quarter of 2021.
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Samsung Heavy are slated to construct seven 23,000-TEU container ships and five 23,000-TEU container ships, respectively, by the second quarter of 2020.
“Since HMM sent out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to shipbuilding companies on April 10, HMM has considered all the conditions for newbuilding including delivery date and price of new ships suggested by shipbuilders, and finally selected three shipbuilders to sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) for 20 new vessels,” the liner said in a media release earlier this month.
After the LOI signing, HMM said it now plans to sign a contract with the three shipbuilders after discussing further details of the building process.
The three Korean shipbuilders are the world’s three biggest shipyards by orders, said the report. The companies have streamlined their businesses by selling non-core assets and reducing the workforce as the 2008 financial crisis resulted in oversupply and declining orders.
