Cosco Shipping to Order 15 More Containerships

What’s new: Chinese state-owned giant Cosco Shipping Holdings Co. Ltd. (601919.SH) plans to order 15 containerships at a cost of $2.9 billion from an affiliated shipyard, Caixin learned from Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry Co. Ltd.

The containerships cost $170 million to $230 million each and are expected to be delivered starting in 2025. Some of them will be methanol dual-fuel vessels, according to Norwegian shipping news media TradeWinds.

Cosco Shipping Holdings and Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry are subsidiaries of state-owned China Cosco Shipping Corp., which is the merged entity of China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co. (Cosco) and China Shipping (Group) Co. Cosco Shipping is the third-largest container carrier in the world, with fleet of 498 container vessels and a total capacity of 3 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

During the pandemic, Cosco Shipping placed four large shipbuilding orders for 34 new ships with 590,000 TEUs.

The background: Shipping lines around the world are racing to build new vessels amid a continuing boom in container shipping. Profits generated from high freight rates allow carriers with abundant cash flow not only to buy new ships but also to pay for logistics, terminals and other assets, industry insiders said.

Cosco Shipping earned 64.7 billion yuan of profit in the first half of this year and 89.3 billion yuan last year, according to its earnings report.

As new ships begin to launch, shipping broker Clarkson said it expects global container fleet capacity to grow 3.7% this year and 8.1% in 2023.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use. To read the full story in Chinese, click here.

Contact reporter Denise Jia (huijuanjia@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (bob.simison@caixin.com)

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