7.8 billion yuan for 20 ships! Two Chinese shipping companies are set to win a major container ship order from CMA CMA
If the container ship shipping market continues to heat up, the shipping giants will not stop building ships. This time, CTC, the shipping giant, will invest $1.2 billion to order up to 20 5500TEU container ships from two Chinese shipping companies.
According to Tradewinds, CAFI has signed 5+5 5500TEU Panamax container ships with Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group and Qingdao North Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, code-named "Project Slade". The new ships, which will be equipped with about 800 receptacles for refrigerators, are expected to cost more than $60 million each and are expected to be delivered in 2023.
CCMA's new ships will operate on conventional power, rather than LNG power, as it has previously ordered for its very large container ships. Industry sources say such Panamax container ships are not big enough to accommodate expensive LNG bunkers, and the cost of engines would be high and uneconomic.
If the order is finalised, it will be the first time that BSIC has built a container ship. The company, which has focused on building bulk and ore carriers, has orders for 22 4.575 million DWT vessels, including five VLOC vessels of 325, 000 DWT and 14 bulk carriers, according to Clarkson.
And this order has completed the annual order target for the Yangtze River Shipbuilding Group is "icing on the cake". Yangzijiang Shipbuilding is undoubtedly the biggest winner in the container ship building market this year. According to the international shipping network, since the beginning of this year, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group has received a total of 44 container ship orders, the vast majority of which are branch container ships of less than 5000TEU, in addition to 4 11800TEU, 10 15000TEU and 4 24000TEU large container ships. Orders received totaled 371,340 TEUs, or about 1,656,000 CGT, equivalent to 42.7% of the global total container ship orders (97 ships, 3,878 million CGT).
CTAC's fleet currently operates 554 container ships with a total capacity of 2,991,446 TEU, accounting for about 12.3% of the market and ranking fourth in the world in terms of capacity, according to Alphaliner. In addition, CTAC has 24 hand-held vessels on order, totaling 377,136 TEU. If the hand-held orders are added, CTAC's capacity will overtake that of COSCO Shipping Group, which currently ranks third in the world, and regain its third position in the world.
Previously, CAFI announced the 2020 results, the profitability of all the performance segments have improved. Revenue reached $31.45 billion, up 3.9 percent year on year. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were $6.109bn, up 62.5 per cent year on year. Thanks to the strong development of international trade, CAFI made a net profit of US $1.755 billion in 2020, successfully turning a profit compared with a loss of US $229 million in 2019.
According to the performance report of CAFI, the operating revenue of its Marine sector in 2020 will be US $24.23 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 4%. EBITDA was $5.5 billion, up 71.1% from a year earlier, and net profit was $1.86 billion. CAFI said the growth in its shipping business was mainly due to higher freight rates, with average revenue per TEU of $1,154, up 6.8 per cent year on year.
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