Norwegian owner orders methanol dual-fuel newbuildings

The vessels will be built at China-based shipyard Taizhou Sanfu Ship Engineering for delivery in the second half of 2024. They will be able to run on methanol and MGO and come with 15-year time charters to North Sea Container Line (NCL), backed by Contracts of Affreightment (CoAs) from various parties, including a 15-year CoA with Norwegian industrial group Elkem ASA.

The contract price of USD 39 million per vessel is covered by the contracted cash flows from the 15-year time charter with NCL.

The project has been awarded NOK 13.7 million by Enova, Electrification of Maritime Transport program, owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, and NOK 60 million from the NOx fund, the Norwegian business sector’s fund to reduce emissions.

The vessel owning entities will be majority owned by MPCC (90.1%) together with Topeka MPC Maritime (9.9%), a joint venture between Topeka Holding (zero emission shipping company owned by Wilhelmsen Group) and MPC Capital.

MPCC CEO, Constantin Baack, said: “Together with our partners NCL and Elkem, this project allows us to set up a green transportation corridor in Northern Europe, proving our ability to identify and execute on opportunities that are accretive whilst allowing us to make the right move towards a further decarbonisation of the fleet. It also demonstrates that we can meet ambitious environmental goals by joining forces with like-minded partners and we are looking forward to facilitating a green container shipping supply chain along the Norwegian coastline.

“We believe that regional container trades with their specific features such as predictable trading profiles and manageable investments in fuel infrastructure will likely become the first truly green shipping trades.

“With this project we continue to execute our selective growth strategy whilst mitigating residual value risk and renewing our fleet. The economics of this deal will support MPCC’s distribution potential from 2024 onwards.”

MPCC joined the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping as an official supporter in February 2022.