Evergreen, one of Taiwan's largest shipping companies, is set to order 24 new mega-container vessels in a multi-billion dollar deal. The ships, which will be 16,000 TEU each, will be equipped with methanol dual fuel engines, and are part of Evergreen's efforts to meet global decarbonization goals.
According to Maersk Broker, Evergreen has already released the tender for the new ships, with shipyards having until May 17 to submit their bids. The total cost of the order is estimated to be around $4.3 billion, with each vessel likely costing around $180 million.
Due to the limited availability of slots within 2026, the order is expected to be divided among several yards, with the top three Korean yards being considered the frontrunners for the project, according to Maersk Broker's latest container market weekly report. Upon the conclusion of the contracts, Evergreen is also planning to launch another tender for a large series of 3,000 TEU vessels.
This news comes at a time when the container shipping industry is facing challenges, with global liners seeing a recent slide in earnings. Despite this, the industry's demand for new, more efficient vessels continues to rise. In the last 10 quarters, over 8.61 million TEU worth of container ships have been contracted globally, a figure that matches the level contracted during the preceding 30 quarters, according to new data from shipping organization BIMCO.
The order book for container ships has now increased for ten consecutive quarters, reaching a new record high in each of the last four quarters. BIMCO predicts that, taking scrapping into account, the global box fleet will soon exceed 30 million TEU for the first time, representing a 16% increase compared to the current fleet size.
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