Massive boxship contract for Daewoo

Daewoo Shipbuilding Marine & Engineering Co. (DSME) has won a deal valued at $1.5 billion to build nine container vessels. The order from a European shipping company calls on DSME to deliver the vessels by March, 2011.

Following this order, DSME said it has already met its previous order target of $11 billion for 2007 and, with six more months to go, has raised its order target for the year by 55% to $17 billion. The $11 billion worth of orders for this year comprises of 84 ships, including 50 container ships and six ships to carry liquefied natural gas, the company said. “We expect more orders for value-added container ships, LNG carriers, drill ships and floating production storage & offloading units, or FPSOs, to come in the second half of this year,” a company spokesman said.

The shipbuilder’s order backlog reached $30.2 billion at the end of June this year, with production of those orders expected to take more than three years.