Evergreen confirms containership orders

The Korean yard will build ten 8,000 TEU ‘L’ class vessels at a cost of $103 million each and will be delivered in 2012-2013, with the last unit scheduled for November 2013. Six of the new vessels are to be built for Evergreen Marine Corp (EMC – the Taiwan listed arm of Evergreen) and four for Evergreen International S.A. (Panama).

The newbuildings will have overall length of 334.8m, a beam of 45.8m and a cruising speed of 24.5 knots and will be the largest vessels in the Evergreen-owned fleet. Although the company declares the vessels’ capacity at 8,000 TEU, the dimensions suggest that the real capacity could be some 20% higher. The ‘L’ class ships will be one row wider than those of Evergreen’s existing 8,073 TEU ‘C’class design, which come with a 42.8m beam. The ‘C’ class ships were built in 2005-2006 and are long term chartered from German owner Conti Reederei.

Evergreen said that “the ten ships are the beginning of a programme of a new generation of container vessels that will be ordered by Evergreen Line from several shipbuilding yards in Asia.” This programme could include up to 92 ships for over 500,000 TEU. Further orders are expected to be placed at STX Shipbuilding and CSBC shortly. STX Shipbuilding had announced last week that it has signed a Letter of Intent in June for a containership order with an unidentified Taiwanese carrier.

The present order at Samsung is the first time that Evergreen has ordered ships directly for its own account at a Korean yard. Until now, all of Evergreen’s vessel series have been built in either Japan or Taiwan.