Taiwanese shipping major Evergreen Marine Line has reportedly placed an order for twenty 15,000 TEU containerships, broker reports indicate .
Five containerships have been booked at South Korean Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI), an additional five at China’s Hudong-Zhonghua, while the remaining 10 were ordered from the Japanese shipbuilder Imabari via a deal with Shoei Kisen, the yard’s shipowning and leasing arm.
Offshore Energy-Green Marine has reached out to Evergreen for a confirmation of the order.
“Evergreen continually studies various types of vessels and will place order or charter most suitable vessels depending on market requirement. Evergreen is continuing with fleet renewal program for the purpose of optimizing service quality and competitiveness, ” the company said in an official statement.
Lars Jensen , CEO and Partner of Sea Intelligence Consulting, said in a post on his Linkedin account that Evergreen’s orderbook now accounts for some 750,000 TEU and more than 50% of their current fleet.
“This ordering does not necessarily signal a sudden rush for volume on the part of Evergreen, and hence should not be seen as a sign of a new volume and pricewar in the industry ,” he said.
“Despite almost continuously having had an orderbook of some 30-50% of their fleet since 2011, their annual capacity growth in this decade has been a somewhat moderate 7.7%. “
“It is clear that one of their key roles in the “eco system” of container shipping is to bring new tonnage into the market and cascade older tonnage to other players. “
Based on the information available on VesselsValue, the company has 20 newbuilds already on order including ten 23,000 TEU containerships at three separate yards and ten smaller containerships with deliveries spread across 2021 and 2022.