China: Seaspan Corporation Receives New 4500 TEU Container Ship from SHI

Seaspan Corporation announced that it accepted delivery of the Berlin Bridge, a 4500 TEU containership, from Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. The new containership is Seaspan’s fifth delivery in 2011 and expands the Company’s operating fleet to 60 vessels.

The Berlin Bridge is on charter to Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. (“K-Line”) of Japan under a twelve-year, fixed-rate time charter with options to K-Line to extend the charter term up to an additional six years. The vessel is the fourth of five 4500 TEU sister ships and the sixth of a total of seven vessels to be chartered by Seaspan to K-Line.

Samsung Heavy Industries or SHI is the second-largest shipbuilder in the world and one of the “Big Three” shipbuilders of South Korea. A core subsidiary of the Samsung Group, South Korea’s and the world’s largest conglomerate, SHI’s main focus is on shipbuilding, offshore floaters, digital devices for ships, and construction and engineering concerns.

SHI operates manufacturing facilities at home and abroad, including ship block fabrication factories in Ningbo and Rongcheng, China. The Geoje Shipyard in particular, SHI’s largest shipyard in South Korea, boasts the highest dock turnover rate in the world. The largest of the three docks, Dock No. 3, is 640 meters long, 97.5 meters wide, and 13 meters deep. Mostly ultra-large ships are built at this dock, having the world’s highest production efficiency with yearly dock turnover rate of 10 and the launch of 30 ships per year.[2]

SHI specializes in the building of high added-value and special purpose vessels, including LNG carriers, off-shore related vessels, oil drilling ships, FPSO/FSO’s, ultra Large container ships and Arctic shuttle tankers. In recent times SHI has concentrated on LNG tankers and drillships, for which it is the market leader.

About Seaspan

Seaspan is a leading independent charter owner of containerships, which it charters primarily pursuant to long-term fixed-rate time charters to major container liner companies. Seaspan’s contracted fleet of 69 containerships consists of 60 containerships in operation and 9 containerships scheduled for delivery through March 2012. Seaspan’s operating fleet of 60 vessels has an average age of approximately five years and an average remaining charter period of approximately seven years. All of the 9 vessels to be delivered to Seaspan are already committed to fixed-rate time charters of 12 years in duration from delivery. Seaspan’s customer base consists of eight of the world’s largest liner companies, including A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, China Shipping Container Lines (Asia) Co., Ltd., Compania Sud Americana de Vapores S.A., COSCO Container Lines Co., Ltd., Hapag-Lloyd USA, LLC, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd., Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd., and United Arab Shipping Company (S.A.G.).

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Source: SeaspanCorporation, May 10, 2011.