Stolt-Nielsen goes to ShinA for newbuildings

Stolt-Nielsen SA of Norway announced that its Stolt-Nielsen Transportation Group (SNTG) unit has ordered four 44,000DWT parcel tankers from South Korea’s ShinA Shipbuilding. The aggregate price for the four ships is expected to be just under $230 million and delivery is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2008.

Each ship will be equipped with 29 fully coated tanks and will be built to IMO 2 specifications, providing the additional segregations and cleaning capacity required to transport vegetable oils and chemicals. The ships have higher deadweight capacity than those built by SNTG in its last round of newbuildings in the late 1990s, complementing SNTG’s current high-end all stainless steel fleet. The ships will replace tonnage currently scheduled for withdrawal from SNTG’s fleet.